


The Problem With Little Monsters

by Signel_chan



Series: seeds of a future [3]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Bad Decisions, Childbirth, Disabled Character, F/M, Medical Conditions, Pregnancy, chiaki is one hundred percent disaster human, hajime is one hundred percent a saint for dealing with her, problem solving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23145130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: Rather than simply live with the problem Chiaki has always referred to as her "little monster", she decides that taking drastic measures is what's most appropriate. But her measures might just be too drastic, especially in Hajime's eyes, since he sees how she can barely take care of herself in a functional way. How in the world does she expect to take care of someone else, too?
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Nanami Chiaki
Series: seeds of a future [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1417822
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t exactly a typical, daily occurrence for Hajime to come home after a day of work to find all the lights off, because he was usually greeted moments after he came inside by Chiaki telling him that she was playing or streaming a game. This _was_ something that happened on a regular cycle though, and his heart sank a bit to think that he’d been so unaware of what was happening as to miss the fact that the woman dearest to his heart was feeling under the weather. As quietly as he could, he dropped off his shoes and jacket by the door before tiptoeing down to their bedroom, noticing that the door was cracked open just enough that opening it wouldn’t take much effort.

When he pushed it open, he saw what he’d figured he’d be walking into: Chiaki curled up in the bed, blankets askew and a heating pad strewn across her midsection, her head tilted back with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Hey, how are you feeling?” he asked, making his way to her side of the bed, one of her eyes opening just enough to see his concerned face up above her. “If I’d known it was this time, I would’ve stopped to get you something.”

“Can’t do anything for it,” she croaked in reply, her voice sounding strained. “Hurts too much, Hajime.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” His first order of business was to turn the heating pad off and move it off of her, the visible skin underneath it bright red from the heat she’d been holding on it. “Come on, you know you can’t have that on all day, don’t you remember when you burned yourself sleeping on it?”

She responded to his act by closing her eye back up, before curling herself tighter into a ball. “The burn hurt less than this does. I’d be okay with going through it again.”

“No, you really wouldn’t be.” This was the same kind of conversation they had what roughly amounted to every single month, where she was rendered completely helpless against the raging monster that was her monthly cycle, which they both had a lot of names for that they’d jokingly call it from time to time. It was why Hajime dreaded the times he’d come home from his boring job to see Chiaki not doing anything regarding her more exciting one, because her so-called “little monster” would render her completely unable to do anything for as long as it took to work its way through her.

Asking her to keep talking to him was going to be more torturous to her than anything, so he carefully made a spot for himself on her side of the bed and sat there with her, running his fingers through her thick hair to comfort her. She was in absolute pain, her cheeks flushed and her skin warm to the touch, and if there was anything that could be done for her he would’ve suggested it in a heartbeat. When she said she couldn’t do anything for it she really meant it, the result of years upon years of her trying to treat the monstrous problem at the source and finding nothing had even a minor impact on curbing its vicious properties. There’d been so many kinds of medication, so many doctor visits, so many attempts at putting a stop to the reign of terror her menstrual cycle would put her body through, and not a single one had done anything to help her out.

As much as it sucked that this was part of their monthly lives, there didn’t seem to be any feasible options to prevent it, and so for the following few days Hajime would return home to Chiaki in basically the same place, some days with a glass of water at her side and others with a video game in her hand, but always in the bed looking like she was close to crying in pain. She was a lot stronger than he figured he’d be able to be in such a horrible situation, but it was something she’d been living with since she was a young teenager, and she’d even been the one to first give the problem a cutesy name to refer to it with. Finally, after nearly a week of being within the grasp of her little monster, she was feeling well enough to be back out in her normal gaming spot when Hajime came home from work, and that was how he knew that things would be fine until the cycle started up again.

“Maybe someday there’ll be some miracle cure that will stop this,” he remarked a couple days after things had gone back to how they should have always been. “It hurts me to see you in so much pain, and to know I can’t do anything to help you.”

“I think you staying with me even though this happens every month is help enough,” she replied, a serene smile on her lips as she spoke, even though her focus was on the TV on the wall and the game she was playing. Chiaki always looked to be most at peace when she was sitting on the couch, leaning forward to get just a bit closer to the big screen, with her controller in hand and all of her strategies running through her mind. When she was at the mercy of the monster she couldn’t even sit up, preventing her from doing what she loved until things were over. “I’ll talk to my doctor again though, maybe she’ll have a new thing we can try. Remember when she put that thing in my arm? That sorta worked.”

Hajime winced at the memory she was recalling, shaking his head to forget the sight of the small bulge in her upper arm that Chiaki had shown him resulting from the procedure, a mark that lasted for all of two months before it had to be quickly removed. “Sure, it worked, until the monster flared up off-sequence and you didn’t eat for five days, then that was the end of that.”

“It was a nice month where I didn’t deal with it, though. I wonder if I can experience that again sometime.” Her wistful tone was hopeful, and it hurt Hajime to know that the peace she was looking for was most likely never going to come for her. As long as he’d known her, since they were students at the same school that occasionally crossed paths, she’d been afflicted with the immobilizing pain every single month, and that hadn’t changed no matter how many radical treatments she signed herself up for.

He hadn’t even known it was as bad as it was until they’d started dating, and he learned it was even worse when they’d moved in together and made their relationship even more serious. By the time they’d decided to get legally married, for all of the benefits that came with it (including allowing her to find new doctors because of the avenues he opened to her with his job), he’d seen her go through so many months of pain that he was a master at being as supportive as he could be during those times, and it was after that when she was given a new doctor with a new list of treatments to try out. Not like anything that had been thrown at her had ever worked for longer than that single month’s reprieve, he thought. “I’m sure someday they’ll come up with something for you,” he said, trying to stay positive about the situation. “It’s not like you’re the only person out there dealing with this, you know?”

“Yes, but it seems like most people have a solution they can turn to, and I can’t.” It was a miracle that she was holding the conversation as well as she was, given that Chiaki’s attention was almost exclusively on the game she was playing, but sometimes she surprised Hajime with her ability to split her focus. “I keep thinking that the next visit will be different, that someone will have come up with something, but it doesn’t seem likely. That’s okay though, I think.”

“You think? You can’t do anything for a week while you’re curled in bed, that doesn’t sound like it’s okay at all!” Pushing a hand onto his forehead as he thought about what he’d just heard her say to him, Hajime felt the need to step away from the conversation and return to it with some better-thought statements. They discussed this sort of thing frequently, given that it was a rather big topic there in the house, but he never knew how he was supposed to properly react to Chiaki resigning herself to living with this problem untreated. She was so happy and hopeful about everything else in her life that it was genuinely bothersome at times to see her convinced that she was going to lose time every month to the problem.

That changed starting with the next time she saw her doctor, but in the time before that there were many months where she was regularly relegated to laying in bed, feeling like she was unable to move without splitting pain tearing her apart or making her sick. Usually she would let Hajime know that she could _feel_ it coming on, because tracking her cycles was useless as they were completely irregular, and he’d come home from work the next day laden with gifts to try making her a bit happier. Food was off the table, as was anything that required movement or more attention than she could give laying in the fetal position, so he typically showed up with a stuffed rabbit or a plush of a game character for her to keep at her side until she was able to resume normal activities. The testament to how long she’d been going through this rough process was the filled bins of these gifts that she kept in the main room, using them as shelves for her gaming devices.

When the day came that Hajime got home from work and Chiaki was nowhere to be seen, not in the bedroom or playing her games or anyone that he could find her, it took him a few minutes of looking around confused before he remembered where she was. Her appointments to try and solve the problems surrounding that little monster were important enough, but he’d had a particularly stressful day at work and hadn’t been intending on coming home to being alone. He wasn’t one for venting out his frustrations, especially not to Chiaki as she wouldn’t do anything but idly nod along with whatever he was saying, but there was just something about what he went through on a daily basis at work that made him quick to want to get everything out of his system.

Since Chiaki wasn’t home and playing her games, he decided he’d turn something on and pass the time while he waited for her to get back. He didn’t play nearly as much as she did, having a real career that wasn’t based on streaming video games to people who had nothing better to do with their time, but whenever he had the chance he liked to kick back and play something casual. His choice that day was a racing game, simply because it was the last thing that Chiaki had been playing and he didn’t feel like switching any of her games around, and while he wasn’t very good at it, he was still able to have fun playing.

At least beating and banging into the other cars he was racing against was a form of working out frustrations, and without really intending on doing it he began mentally referring to some of the other racers by the names of his co-workers. The ones that kept sabotaging him were called the names of people who liked sending him emails meant for a completely different person (and when called out on it, they’d claim that it was an honest mistake, but Hajime knew that his name was nowhere near the name of Izuru Kamakura, and he hoped these people were smart enough to know that too). The ones that somehow kept getting ahead of everyone and winning despite the odds were named for the people who always were getting raises and promotions without deserving them. And the ones that did nothing but ride around in the back were his slacker co-workers that he always did more work than, only for them all to be treated the same.

He got so wrapped up in his cathartic racing that he barely noticed when Chiaki got home, not acknowledging her with anything more than a quick glance before he was right back to focusing on his game. She slowly took off her shoes and her jacket, leaving all of her personal belongings in its pockets, before she lazily strolled to the couch and sat down next to Hajime, her face blank as she scooted as close to him as she could without breaking his concentration. “I have something to say to you,” she started, speaking quietly as she leaned into his ear, the feeling of her breath tickling his jawline. “It’s really important, so you should stop playing.”

“If you can have important conversations with me while gaming, I think I can do the same back to you,” he replied, eyes not lifting off the screen as he battled for dominance and the lead of the race. “I promise that I can listen and play at once.”

Without missing a beat, she bought into what he said and told him exactly what she was there to say: “I think we should try having a baby.”

Any focus he had on the game was gone, her words hitting him just like the cars he’d been racing with hit his now-stopped vehicle. “I’m sorry, say that again?” he prompted, not because he didn’t hear her, but because he wasn’t sure that she’d actually said what he knew he heard. She did in fact repeat it, with the same soft tone and intonation she’d used before, and he could feel his stomach drop at the realization of how serious she was. “That’s what I thought you said, and I…don’t think I agree with you.”

“I know, it’s weird to think about, but you have to hear me out.” Leaning away from him, her spirits unharmed at his surprised reaction, Chiaki leaned back into the cushions of the couch and let her head roll from side to side. “The doctor said that there’s a chance that having a baby would solve my problem, and I think trying it would be worth it.”

“Whoa, you’re willing to make that kind of huge life decision because of a chance it’ll help you?” Hajime sounded incredulous, and that was because he couldn’t believe what kind of justification she’d just given. This was someone who hated doing much more than eat, sleep, and play games suggesting that they have a child, someone that they’d have to be responsible for and raise and take care of for a very, very long time. “I’m pretty sure that neither of us would be ready for having a kid around, Chiaki. Just think about that. Could you see yourself having to be there for a baby?”

“I’ve raised babies in games before,” she told him, as if it was a fair comparison to make. A digital baby was just a collection of pixels that would never have real harm befall it, but a living child was a real responsibility that had no take-backs. “But I think we could do it, especially if it means I don’t have to hurt like I do anymore.”

He wasn’t going to consider himself an expert on children by any means, but part of what Chiaki was using as defense for her position now was rubbing Hajime the wrong way once again. “I’m pretty sure that you’ll have to go through a lot more hurting before you’d even know if it worked or not. And what if it doesn’t work? What if we go through with this and we have a kid and you’re still suffering from your monster every month? Who’s going to take care of a baby while you’re in bed and I’m at work?”

“We have friends who can do it,” she replied after putting her finger to her chin in thought, “because they love us and they love kids too. I really think this would be worth it.” He didn’t know if she was looking for immediate agreement or if she was going to let him think about things as long as he needed to, but either way, there was nothing in that moment that was going to make Hajime go along with that plan. He sat there in silence for a while, as Chiaki waited for whatever he had to say next, and when no response came she quietly took the controller out of his tense hands and restarted his game so that she could play for herself.

Replying to her felt like it was going to go nowhere, and the last thing Hajime needed right then was to get trapped in a looping conversation where what he wanted wasn’t clear but it certainly wasn’t what she wanted. Instead of trying to solve things right then, he stood up and left the room, needing some space to clear his head and process what hair-brained suggestion she’d had for him. That wasn’t exactly something that people could take lightly, as it was a huge life decision that would have impacts for the rest of their days, and while he could understand that she was throwing it out there as a potential solution to her monthly problem, it didn’t seem like it was the best or most appropriate option.

He spent most of the rest of the night doing some research of his own, so that when it came time to discuss once again he had some information at his disposal. What he found was the basis for her conclusion, as well as claims of people that the exact opposite would happen, and a third group stating that there would be no change at all. That right there was already a blow to her plan, and it brought his soul a bit of peace knowing that he was clearly doing the right thing telling her no when it wasn’t likely to work. There were many articles about the possible benefits to having a child in terms of regulating and lightening cycles, but they all cautioned that the decision was not one to be made just for that purpose, which was exactly what Hajime felt about the situation. If they’d ever talked about having children before that day, he’d possibly have been slightly more open-minded to the idea, but that was the very first time it had been brought up and under those circumstances.

Even when he was eating dinner (she was too busy getting wrapped up in her games to join him for a meal) he was thinking about formulating his argument against her stance, occasionally stealing glances toward her in her typical position on the couch, leaning far forward as if her proximity to the TV would help her gaming at all. She was honestly too much like a child herself for him to even consider wanting to have a child with her; even though he loved her dearly and was willing to spend the rest of his life with her, he often felt like he was more a caretaker for her and her flighty mind than he was her significant other, her legal husband in the eyes of the law. He frequently had to remind her to eat, to stop playing her games long enough to take a shower and freshen up, to get a decent amount of sleep before she started seeing things that weren’t there. If he had to add in another person, especially one physically unable to care for themselves, he’d basically be caring for two children at once and he didn’t even want to be caring for one.

That felt harsh for him to think, especially with how childlike Chiaki was so much of the time, but he had to assure himself that the thought was valid. That was another piece of ammunition he’d have available for him whenever they had a round two of their discussion, and if he could just point out how much like a father he had to be with her sometimes, he was sure he’d be able to get her to begin doubting her potential as a mother.

Mentally he was setting himself up for a continuation of the conversation that night before bed, but right at about the time he was winding down to go to sleep, she was setting up a gaming stream for some of her fans. “Sorry, Hajime, but I promised I would tonight and I forgot about it until now,” she said as an explanation for her actions, while he stood over her wearing his pajamas and ready to call it a day. “I’ll remember to eat before I join you later, you can trust me.”

“I don’t think I’ve got much of a choice there, I can’t stay up with you tonight.” The dread of having to go back to work in the morning was beginning to set in, with all of the coworkers he couldn’t stand and this new relationship debate brewing in his mind, but he couldn’t ignore it to spend time with his wife. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, yeah? Don’t be too loud, and you really do need to eat.”

She nodded, standing up so that they could quickly kiss without him having to bend down to her level. As she wiped her mouth after, her eyes shining with affection from the interaction, she let herself lean into him, their bodies touching for just a moment before she pulled back, a sense of shock having overcome her. “I can’t be doing that right now, the stream should be starting any moment. Good night, Hajime.”

“Yeah, good night, Chiaki.” There was a tone to her voice that startled him, causing him to hesitate somewhat in his response, so by the time he’d said her name she was already sitting back down, going back to her own little world of gaming. He walked to their bedroom alone, the feeling of tiredness aching down into his bones, and by the time he’d gotten into bed with the light off he could already feel his eyelids heavy. Sleep came quickly for him, and with it came what felt like a movie reel of nightmares, all of which played with the topics heavy on his mind. He jolted awake several times through the night, the last thing he vividly remembered ranging from a room full of clone-like babies all screaming at him, to a surprise house party where all of his unsavory coworkers had invaded his house, to the most frequently reoccurring one of all, in which Chiaki left him for the man his coworkers liked to pretend he was.

No matter what time it was when he woke up from those nightmares, drenched in a sweat that clung to his skin and seeped into the clothing he was wearing, Chiaki was nowhere to be found in the bed, which often meant that she fell asleep mid-stream, or hadn’t fallen asleep at all yet. Her presence would have been comforting to Hajime, proving that they were fine and that things were normal between them, but he knew he couldn’t drag her away from whatever she’d gotten herself wrapped up in that night. When he woke up for the day, though, she was curled up on her side of the bed, a stuffed rabbit in her arms and her body completely out from underneath the blankets. Seeing her laying there was soothing to his heart, and as much as he wanted to know if she had done the basic task she’d been instructed to do the night before he was aware that waking up her up was not a good idea.

That day at work was miserable, as most of them were, and every moment he spent stuck at his desk, hearing the chatter of the people around him making plans for their night and the upcoming weekend, made him only want to get back home to Chiaki more than he usually did. They weren’t big on making plans and executing them, but they did have something they needed to talk about and it had remained at the front of his mind all day, even when people were poking fun at him for being so remarkably average in everything at his job.

Returning home at the end of the shift was a relief, but just when he thought he’d have the time to talk to Chiaki he was greeted with the reality that nothing was meant to go his way. She was in the middle of a stream with several other notable gamers when he got home, her soft voice raised to higher levels as she talked commandingly to the people she was playing with, and she couldn’t even spare him a second to wave to show that she knew he was home. It was a bit of a blow to him, after how he’d used getting to see her again as his motivation to get through the day, but it was to be expected, especially with streaming being how she helped pay the bills.

By the time she finished up, the night had blown by and it was already getting closer to bedtime than Hajime would have liked to admit. As much as he wanted to get that conversation over and done with, he knew that starting it so late would result in missed sleep, which would only add to his sour mood when he was at work the next day. “I didn’t know they would keep me on so long, I’m so sorry,” Chiaki apologized, having taken off her gaming headset and turned all of her equipment off before talking to him. “I know that you don’t like when I spend all day doing that.”

“It’s fine,” he told her, gritting his teeth and keeping all other thoughts close to his chest to keep them from escaping. “I know that you’ve got to do those things to make money, and besides, you sounded like you were having fun.”

“I was having fun.” From there Chiaki broke into an in-depth explanation of some of the gaming mechanics and specifics of what she’d been doing all day, and while Hajime understood a good portion of it, he couldn’t really be bothered to care too much about the details. The reality that he was going to have to suffer through another day of planning out their big conversation had sunk in, and now he was just biding time until the golden hour of talking out their life direction was upon them.

They were able to head to bed together that night, taking their sides without any sort of physical contact along with some sleepy assertions of how they felt towards the other. The way Chiaki spoke when she was about to force herself into sleeping, just to be there at Hajime’s side overnight, was gentle and calm, and it brought him peace to hear it. Just as he was letting his eyes close, he heard her add something to her usual message of “I love you” and “good night”, and the sound of it had him shooting straight up in their darkened room: “I can’t wait until we can try having a baby.”

“Whoa there, Chiaki, we haven’t really talked more about that,” he reminded her, not wanting to have that conversation right then but knowing it was most likely coming whether he wanted it or not. “And I still feel like I did before about it, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us. Can we talk about this when we’re not laying down for bed?”

“Oh, I didn’t know that you felt so strongly.” Yawning after her statement, which he couldn’t tell if it was a genuine thing or if she was being teasing and thinking he was joking around with her, Chiaki rolled onto her side, facing away from him, and mumbled something to herself that he couldn’t quite hear. That was the end of the discussion right then, which surprised Hajime because he could’ve sworn it would’ve kept going, but she accepted his rejection of wanting to talk and went right to sleep.

Unfortunately for him, sleep wasn’t going to come as easy for his now-frantic mind after that jolt back into reality. Even with the gentle sounds of her snoring on the other side of the bed, he couldn’t get himself into a state of comfort and ease while laying there, his brain running through all the possible avenues that the little exchange they’d had there could now take them on. The last thing he wanted, or needed, was for a rift to start forming between them over the idea of children, but he was aware that she only wanted to try because she was convinced it would be a miracle cure for her problems, and he’d read the anecdotes about how that wasn’t always the case.

Whenever it was that he fell asleep, it wasn’t nearly early enough for him to have a restful night, and morning came a lot faster than Hajime would have liked to admit. He barely dragged himself out of the bed, Chiaki still snoring where she’d curled up, and just watching her so at peace made him wish he could rejoin her. But someone had to be the responsible adult in the house and it certainly wasn’t going to be her, and so he had to go back to the place he couldn’t stand working for another day, another amount of being treated like he was lesser than anyone else that he worked with.

His return home was when he intended on finally having that conversation in its entirety with Chiaki, and she seemed to be on the same wavelength, as she was idly sitting in her usual spot, a controller in her lap but her hands far from it. “Are we going to talk about what I said last night?” she asked, before Hajime actually had the chance to get fully through the front door. “Because I think we should talk about it.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d been thinking it since she’d said it the very first time, but he was sure that she actually knew that already. “I haven’t changed how I feel about the idea, and I’m not going to change my mind easily. Not when I’ve done my own research, and—”

“Hajime, please. Doesn’t the fact that the doctor told me this could work mean anything to you?” Putting on a pout that made her look even more childlike, Chiaki reached behind her head and pulled up the hood to the jacket she was wearing, the cat ears on it somewhat distracting from the seriousness of the conversation. “I just want things to go better for me, and this might be the best chance I have. And you won’t let me have it because…why?”

“—if you wouldn’t have cut me off, you’d _know_ why!” He didn’t mean to snap at her, but his finished sentence was punctuated with him slamming the door as hard as he could, his hand shaking as it came off the wood. “I’ve looked into this ‘idea’ that you’re buying into and there’s no proof it’ll work! You’re willing to completely change our lives when what you’re changing them for might not even stick!”

Chiaki’s pout became more pronounced, as her bottom lip started to wobble at how genuinely angry Hajime sounded with her. “I…guess that is a reason why you wouldn’t let me have this chance. I should have thought more about this before I brought it up with you the first time, I am so sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry, you were just looking forward to the possibility of not suffering every month,” he replied, in time with her beginning to sniffle and cry a little. She looked so distraught at the rejection, but he couldn’t let his strength on the matter waver simply because seeing Chiaki cry was so distressing. That would lead to nothing but poor decisions being made, and after he’d just snapped at her about her attempt at making one already he couldn’t allow for them to make one together. He more or less leapt to be at her side, throwing her hood off her head and stroking her hair to try calming her, while she mumbled things about how she should have handled things better than she did.

Ultimately, both of them could have done to be more mindful about the other’s perspective when it came to that topic, but as the following months passed and the same old, same old kept happening, the little spat would rise in each of their minds. It was his insistence that they not do anything about her monstrous problem that kept them in their current situation, but he didn’t want to eat his words and go back on what he firmly believed was a bad choice for them. But when he would see her barely functional in bed after he’d get home from work, or spend all day with her while she was curled up begging for relief on the weekend, the idea that perhaps giving what she seemed to think was a last-ditch effort wouldn’t be the end of the world.

* * *

What ended up happening wasn’t quite intentional, but sometimes people made silly mistakes that should have been prevented beforehand but weren’t for one reason or another. It wasn’t like there was really any way to explain away the fact that sometimes, while half-awake and feeling incredibly physically affectionate, Chiaki would roll over in bed and start batting her eyes at Hajime, saying things that had the simple purpose of arousing him. (She always claimed that the phrases came from raunchy video games she had to play on stream for money, but he didn’t care where they came from, he enjoyed them either way.) From there the predictable would always happen, but while the mood was so quickly set there wasn’t much time to do anything than just go with the flow.

Usually when this would happen, in the morning they’d bring it up and things would be taken care of in the aftermath, but if it was an especially late night and an early morning, sometimes that reminder wouldn’t happen. That became a normal occurrence after a while, after Hajime had resigned himself to the idea that the plan that Chiaki had come home with that day was the one that was worth a shot. He wasn’t going to actively sabotage what she felt was her one chance at finding a solution to her problem, even if he wasn’t sold on the consequences it would have on their day-to-day lives for the future. She was so forgetful that she wouldn’t remember to do anything on her own, especially not something like that, and so each month became a waiting game of seeing if she was going to suffer once again, or if there were going to be larger problems for them to worry about.

To say that it started becoming disheartening whenever the typical happened was the truth, but Hajime would never quite admit to that. He couldn’t let Chiaki know that he’d changed his mind, because making her so upbeat about things and giving her the hope that if they were knowingly trying things would work didn’t sit right with him. If it was meant to be, it would have already happened, he told himself, and since she was still grappling full-contact with her little monster every month it was clear it wasn’t going to be happening.

That was the mindset that he followed up until the day, over a _year_ after the first time they’d ever talked about the idea of children, when he came home to find Chiaki sitting cross-legged in the bed, the blanket pulled over her head and shoulders like a hooded robe, reading something absent-mindedly on her phone even as he opened the bedroom door. His first instinct was to quiet his movements, as when he normally got home and she was in the room that meant that foul things were happening, and it took him a second to realize that she wasn’t curled up in massive amounts of pain. In fact, she looked to be in quite the opposite, even if she was avoiding all eye contact with him in that moment.

“Uh, hey, Chiaki,” he greeted, after clearing his throat to get her attention. “I don’t mean to sound worried or anything, but what’s going on with you? It’s not normal for you to look so happy when you’re in here in the daytime.”

“I didn’t want to get wrapped up in a game and not have time to talk to you,” she replied, setting her phone down on her lap and looking over to him, a peaceful expression on her face, complemented by her rosy cheeks. The fact that she wanted to talk to him felt like it should have been something to raise concern over, but Hajime was more thankful that he hadn’t walked into a warzone than he was worried that something wasn’t right. “There is a big thing I have to tell you, and I have to make sure we’re both paying attention for it.”

He nodded, understanding that she was mostly isolating herself from her games for her own sake, not his. “Lay it on me, I suppose,” he said, as he walked towards the bed to meet her, but she held out a hand to stop him, her palm covered in ink from a pen. “Whoa, why were you drawing on yourself?”

“I got bored sitting in the waiting room before they called me back, so I started drawing on my hand to pass the time.” Coming from someone who usually had several gaming devices or avenues for entertainment on her, it was weird to hear Chiaki talking about being bored, but Hajime quickly got the explanation for why that was, at the same time that she was bucking the blanket off from overtop herself. “I wanted to look grown up and mature sitting there, and not like a child, so I didn’t play anything. But I guess doodling isn’t really mature either, but at least that’s a talent most people don’t frown upon.”’

“Where, exactly, were you sitting and waiting?” he asked to clarify, having caught her refer to a waiting room but having no recollection of her ever mentioning that she had any sort of appointments to be at that day. “You didn’t tell me that you were going to be anywhere but here, so that’s…kind of surprising, coming from you.”

Lowering her head for a moment, Chiaki let her gaze rise once more as a new sense of determination took over, her whole expression changing to one of confidence. “That’s because I didn’t want to tell you about where I was going. I knew if you knew, you’d be so grumpy about things, or you’d call off work, and I didn’t want either to happen.” He was left staring blankly at her while she remained oh-so-confident about whatever it was she was talking about, and his reaction was something she seemed to mind a bit. “I guess you want to know what’s going on, don’t you, Hajime?”

“That’d be nice, yeah.”

“Promise you won’t be mad about it when you hear what I say.” There was a shine in her eyes that he noticed when he made that promise to her, and slowly she began to scoot herself off of the bed, reaching out to him and wordlessly asking for his assistance to get her to her feet. The second she was standing, she was clinging to him, her whole body feeling warm and radiant in his arms, and he could tell that she was holding something inside her heart that was about to burst. “I’m just…I don’t even know how to tell you this, Hajime. It’s so crazy, it’s so weird, it’s so…unreal that I can even say this.”

His arms tightened around her, as he thought about what she could need to say to him that would be eliciting such a reaction in the first place. “You’ll never tell me if you don’t come out and say it,” he reminded her, swaying as they stood to try and coax her statement out of her. “You’ve got to just tell me.”

“You’re right, but…” Swallowing down her words, Chiaki tilted her head so that she was leaning sideways for a second, before her eyes shot open wide and she wrestled her way out of the loving embrace she was currently in. Before Hajime even had the chance to ask her what was wrong, she was running out of the room, one hand clutching her face and the other used to make sure there were no obstacles in her path. He was left with no choice but to follow her, although running to keep up with her (at the fastest he’d ever seen her move, no less) was not something he was keen on doing.  
Where he found her was kneeling in front of the kitchen trash, which had been mostly full to begin with from their weekly garbage. Why she’d chosen there, of all places, to run to he wasn’t going to ask, but by the time he’d gotten there she’d already thrown up whatever had been upsetting her in the first place and she was staring down at the floor in a daze, the hand that had once been over her mouth now pushing her hair out of her face while the other grasped her stomach. “Chiaki, what was that about? You never run like that.”

“I started to feel sick, and I guess I came here because I didn’t want you following me into the bathroom.” Carefully lifting herself up off of the ground, Chiaki bit her lip as she looked at the trash can that she now needed to take care of, but before she made a single move Hajime jumped in and started lifting the bag out of the can, preparing to tie it. “No, don’t toss it out yet, there’s some other things that we should throw away too.”

“What other things?” he asked, freezing his motion of tying the bag to begin looking around the otherwise clean and proper kitchen. “I don’t remember there being anything we needed to throw out right now, and this really needs to go.” She pouted for a split second before telling him that he needed to hold off on taking out the trash, before leaving the kitchen, coming back within thirty seconds with a small bag held tightly in her hands. “Where’d that come from?”

“The bathroom. Why I didn’t want you to follow me.” Her fingers fidgeting around the bag, Chiaki glanced at the half-tied trash in front of Hajime before pushing what she was holding at him, clear hesitance in her actions. “I still don’t know how you’re going to take this but there’s no use in hiding it, since you love me.”

He let his eyes linger on the bag she was offering him for a second, the opaque material preventing him from being able to see whatever was inside of it. When he took it from her, she didn’t quite give it up right away, her grip staying on it for a moment before she sighed and let go of it completely. Already he had a decent guess as to what everything was about, but he wasn’t going to say that to her and ruin all of the secretive behavior she’d been putting on. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at the bag and slowly opened it up, her standing next to him clearly anxious about what he was going to say about what she’d given him. Of all the things he was expecting to see, what he got was about half of them—she’d handed him a bag that was holding a couple empty boxes that once held pregnancy tests. “Where are they? These are just the boxes.”

“I didn’t want to throw them away, since they…since you…you’ll want to see them once you’re over being mad about this.” She was beginning to look like she was ashamed of what she was telling him, which was the result of him having never told her that he was fine with this direction their lives would be going in. “I’ve been using one every few days for weeks now, just to see if maybe something’s different every time. I know you don’t want us to have children because I’m just like a child but…”

“You’re not ‘just like a child’, Chiaki, don’t worry. This is…well, it’s unexpected and I don’t know how I feel about it, but it’s all going to be okay!” Hajime had to put on the appearance that he wasn’t honestly more thrilled with this than his behavior had given the impression of. “So that’s where you went today, I assume? To know about this?”

She gave a weak smile, before nodding. “Yeah, that’s what Mikan suggested I do when I told her about the possibility. She was so excited to hear about it, she was telling me that she wants me to go to her for anything that happens because she’s just about certified in the field and…oh, Hajime! We’re going to be parents!”

Hearing those words come out of Chiaki’s mouth filled Hajime with both excitement and dread at the same time—it was something he’d accepted was a possibility for them for a while now but he hadn’t actually thought that it would happen after so long of trying. “I figured that’s where you were going with this,” he told her, throwing the bag he’d been handed into the trash, which he finally tied up and prepared for taking outside. “But now that it’s out in the open, things really have to change around here before things happen.”

“What do you mean things have to change?” Her head tilting to the side out of curiosity, Chiaki looked at Hajime and waited for him to answer, but he was already staring at her in disbelief at her apparent ignorance. “Oh, I think I get it. It’s about my gaming habits, isn’t it? I should still be able to play my games, the doctor didn’t say that would harm a baby.”

“Trust me, playing games is not the thing that has to change. The forgetting to take care of yourself that comes with it, that’s what needs to change.” It was one of the things that had made him so hesitant to let this happen in the first place, Chiaki’s inability to stay completely functional as an adult at all times, and the fact that it took her deeply thinking about things to remember that did not bode well in his mind. “If you want to prove to me that you’re capable of being a parent, that’s a good place to start.”

“You’re right, I’ll start right there, I promise I’ll show you I can do this. Because…there’s no going back, I’m not going to let anything bad happen to my baby.” Defensively, as if she was trying to protect whatever was growing inside her, Chiaki folded her hands in front of her stomach, looking down to see what she was doing. “I still can’t believe that this is actually going to be happening to us, but that’s how life works, right? Things just go however they want to go.”

Even right then, Hajime didn’t have the heart to say that this was something they’d been trying for, whether aware of it or not, for quite some time. “I think you’re right, this is just something life wanted to throw at us. And now that means in nine months—”

Chiaki chirped, her whole body bouncing slightly as she made the sound. “Not nine months, that’d be like we made the baby today!” she corrected, excitement in her voice. “Think more like…eight months-ish. Maybe a few days more, maybe a few days less.” She smiled at him, as if what she was saying was really a good thing, but the specifics on the math weren’t anything he was quite understanding. Rather than explain what she’d learned that day, because she’d also been unaware of how the months and days actually worked, she decided to put it a different way. “The doctor said that the best guess for when this baby will be born is super late April or early May, and that’s when we should plan for.”

“—okay, so now that means that in late April or early May, we’re going to become parents to a kid that’s going to be our entire world, because life thinks we’re ready for it. Are we ready for it?” He was resisting counting out on his fingers how far off that estimate that he’d just heard was actually off, because something about the numbers and months wasn’t adding up in his mind. In that moment the actual numbers didn’t matter, what mattered was if Chiaki understood what they were going to be getting into.

“I think by the time we meet them, I’ll be ready for it.” She was so upbeat, so clearly excited about what she was talking about, that doubting her seemed like a foolish decision to make; however, Hajime knew that he couldn’t take Chiaki’s words exactly as she said them, not when she was working off of excitement rather than logic. “We’ve got so much to do before we meet them, though, like making a place for them and getting things for them and…oh, it’s going to be so amazing every step of the way!”

He forced a smile, as he finally lifted the trash bag to take it outside and get it out of their sight. “I’m sure it will be, as long as you remember to be serious about everything. The last thing we need is something going wrong because you forget how to be human for a while.”

“Please, Hajime, I know how to be a human most days.”

“I don’t think ‘most days’ will cut it anymore. All days from here on out, to make sure you’re doing what’s best for that baby.” That was when he walked out of the kitchen and headed outside of the house, leaving her behind to do her own thing, and every step he took outside he felt his soul growing heavier, the reality of what they’d just been discussing sinking down on his shoulders more and more. This was what Chiaki had wanted, her avenue for potentially ridding herself of her little monster, and now they had to wait eight months or so to find out if things were going to be worth it. But the possibility that it wasn’t going to do a thing wasn’t what was weighing Hajime down, but rather the fact that they were going to be having a child of their own come the following spring. Their lives were never going to be able to be the same from that moment on, but the big change was still months in the future, something they’d be unable to slow their pace towards now that they knew they were headed in that direction.

With a deep breath he tossed the full bag into the dumpster that they shared with several houses around theirs, and slowly he started back towards the house, nearly dragging his feet at that point. It felt wrong to be feeling like he was dreading what was coming, especially when he’d been partially responsible for it in the first place. If he really hadn’t wanted a child, he would have made sure to be more careful about things, but he’d let Chiaki’s wishes permeate his mind and convince him to give things a shot. She was convinced that this was what was going to be best for her physically, and if it worked he would then have to kick himself for not believing in her sooner.

But between where they were and where they’d find out if it was all for naught or if it worked, there was going to be a lot of time crammed with different changes and things for them to experience, and he had to get into the mindset that this was all going to be okay. Their time as just a couple was going to be coming to an end, and he would need to learn how to be the best father he could be—especially since, no matter what Chiaki would say, he was certain he’d be doing much of the child-raising himself. How they were going to both keep with their careers and have a child between them was something that would need to be worked out in the future, but that was just one bullet-point on a list that was growing longer by the second.

By the time he made it back to the door, he could hear the sounds of a game starting up inside the house, him having not closed the door properly when he’d left so that the sounds inside were permeating through a small, still-open crack. As he stood there listening, he heard Chiaki whistling something over the game’s volume, her choice in tune the battle theme to a completely different game, and it hit Hajime that she was completely at peace with what was happening. The fact that she was actually, legitimately pregnant didn’t seem to be weighing too much on her, even though she’d been stuck going to an appointment she probably had been scared to attend, and she’d gotten sick at least once (and who knew how many other times that had happened while he wasn’t around). She was just living her normal, everyday life and that was what she always did whenever she could, nothing was going to change that,

He pushed the door open to see her sitting in her same spot on the couch, her controller in her hand and her focus entirely on the game she’d started up. “I have a stream I’m running later,” she told him when she finally realized he’d come back. “It won’t be long, but…I promise I won’t say a word about the baby to anyone watching. They aren’t going to find out about anything, ever.”

“I think that may be a bit extreme,” he replied, thinking about how impossible it would be for her to keep that news under wraps forever, when her job required her having a microphone and camera on while she was working. “But if that’s what you want to do, then go for it. Make a…” Trailing off as he brought a hand to his mouth, Hajime saw how Chiaki tore her attention off of her game to look at him, a content smile on her lips. She knew where he was going with what he was going to say, and he didn’t think he needed to finish it, so he waved it off. “Well, you know where that leads. Have fun.”

“You know I will.” Her smile grew for a split second before she was back to watching the screen, her fingers rapidly moving over buttons on her controller as she focused back on her gaming. Their lives were relatively peaceful, and things that happened to them were things that always happened, but the baby thing was a huge curveball that they weren’t ever going to be used to handling. The coming months were going to be a test on them as people and as lovers, and as Hajime still stood there, watching how focused Chiaki was on playing, he couldn’t help but think about how she could possibly be in way over her head with things.

The peaceful life _she_ led was one that was not going to be able to remain the same over time, not unless she went back on her promise to change. That wouldn’t be exactly in line for her to do, but at the same time it would make perfect sense if she decided that she liked being a video game streamer more than a caring mother, and pushed off her responsibilities onto him instead. He wouldn’t be surprised if she did that, but he really hoped that she wouldn’t and that she’d defy his expectations on the matter.

Their night went on as expected. He cooked a meal that ended up being for himself, because Chiaki was too busy with her streaming to step away to eat, the biggest behavior that he knew was going to have to change quickly if she wanted to keep their child healthy. As always while she was on stream, he stayed out of her shot and didn’t let himself be seen or heard by anyone who may have been watching her playing, but while he was eating dinner he sat nearby and listened to how passionate, how into her game that she was. The game in question was a strategy fighting game that she was playing through because of someone who followed her buying it for her, and she was enjoying it every second, but whenever she’d get frustrated and her normally soft voice would raise a tick to convey that frustration, he’d feel himself tense up slightly. That level of anger couldn’t be harmful, but what if she got angrier? Would that be detrimental to their child? Or was he just worrying too much?

Consulting the internet for answers did nothing to calm his mind, as for every person saying things would be fine, there was one with the opposite information. As far as he could tell, no one knew for certain what would happen, and the only way to find out was to see for themselves over time. But the idea of finding out that something was wrong with the child at any point did not help make anything easier to accept, and all Hajime wanted was for everything to be perfect, for Chiaki to find the physical peace she was looking for _and_ make good on her word about changing her ways, and for their family to work out exactly as a normal family would.

He could feel it in his heart that the coming months were going to be the longest, most stressful months of his life as everything piled onto him during them, and he wasn’t sure if there was actually going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Even as he went to bed that night, alone because Chiaki was still playing her game on stream, all he could think about was every possible thing that could go wrong in the near future, and any attempts he made to combat those thoughts with positives led him to jumping to worse conclusions. He wasn’t doing himself any favors, and if he was stressing out then there wasn’t going to be anyone around thinking rationally, which would just make matters worse.

The road to parenthood was never going to be straight and narrow, it was always going to be a wild ride, and unfortunately for him, he wasn’t the one who was the greatest at enduring those curves as they happened. Until that child was in their care—and maybe past that—he wasn’t going to properly rest a single moment.


	2. Chapter 2

The fact that they were going to be having a baby was something that was kept relatively under wraps for as long as possible, just so that people didn’t start sharing their unwanted advice before they were ready to hear it. A lot of people that they’d been close with once upon a time had a child or two, at least, and so it was inevitable that the second they let it slip that there was going to be a baby in their lives that people’s opinions would be coming out of the woodwork. Hajime thought it would be a wonderful idea to not talk about it anywhere that others may overhear a thing or two about it, and Chiaki was always off in her own world so she was willing to agree with him.

However, her strange behaviors that only grew stranger were not exactly kind to keeping their news as secret as they wanted it to be. While she was known for doing weird things on her gaming streams, once they’d gotten over the hill of the first couple months of her pregnancy, things only started getting weirder, and it became completely typical for Hajime to come home from work to seeing her sitting on camera, with only her head and shoulders visible (which was normal, and thankfully wasn’t something that needed to be adjusted), with a cardboard pizza box on her lap that was mostly, if not completely, empty. He’d stare at her for a few moments, shaking his head at what he saw, before going on about his day.

If before her biggest problem had been forgetting to eat and taking care of herself, now that she’d gotten serious about becoming a mother she’d let the switch flip and now she was too focused on doing everything that she could to protect her unborn child. “You can’t get mad at me for eating,” she said after he’d come home every day for a week to the same exact scene of her with various brands of pizza in her possession. “It just sounded good and I ordered it, and that’s what matters, right?”

“I’m not getting mad about you eating,” he replied, sounding exasperated because it felt like he was talking to a child, not a grown woman, “but I am getting annoyed that you’re spending all this money on food that you’re not sharing with me.” That was true, he was having to cook himself meals even though she’d been eating something else, because often the pizzas were nothing he’d dare touch, and if it was something he’d eat she would likely have finished the entire thing before he got a bite. “You have to think things through better, Chiaki, or else this is just going to end badly for both of us.”

She tilted her head to the side, looking at him with eyes that were quickly losing focus on their conversation. “But I’m not spending money on food, my viewers keep buying it for me because they love me. And I’m not sharing it with you because it’s not for you, it’s for me and for the baby.”

“What happened to keeping the baby news between us?”

“I didn’t say I told anyone on stream. I just said I’m hungry and explained what I was hungry for and then there was pizza at the door.” The smile that appeared on Chiaki’s lips when she delivered that news, that she was accidentally manipulating an unaware audience to satiate her cravings, made it hard for Hajime to maintain his level of annoyance with her. She was adorable, especially when she used her platform for her own personal gain, but he knew that what she was doing was going to end poorly for her in the end. “Please, Hajime, don’t be upset with me because I’ve done nothing wrong.”

That was true, and he couldn’t argue with it. “Fair, but maybe you could ask them to order you something healthier in the future? Something tells me that your current diet isn’t exactly the best for anything that’s going on.”

“What do you mean? It’s food, it’s what I need.” The smile on Chiaki’s face faded, replaced with a curious expression as she brought a finger up to her chin, thinking about what he could possibly be implying. “I think you need to stop worrying so much, Hajime. Everything is going to work out just like it needs to, and nothing’s going to go wrong. I promise.”

“That’s not…really a promise I think you can be making,” he replied, not wanting to crack into the ever-growing list of problems he could come up with but knowing that they were all just a breath away. “I don’t want to have to hear anything from your doctor about how there’s something wrong because of what you’re eating, that’s all. Be more mindful about it, then we’ll be fine.”

“We’ll be fine anyway.” Her one finger still on her chin, Chiaki’s other hand reached out towards one of Hajime’s, trying to grab him to draw him in closer. He saw this and gave her his hand, which she eagerly took at the wrist and pulled in towards her stomach, which he took as an invitation to open his hand to feel it. But the second he got to the point of his fingertips touching her shirt, her eyes widened slightly and she adjusted his course, moving his hand from its innocent placement up onto her chest, which was noticeably fuller than it had ever been before.

As he’d been expecting to get to touch her stomach, this was a surprise he wasn’t prepared for, and the way he got flustered as she stared at him, the tired and blank expression on her face completely removed from the contact they were having, only made matters worse. Within moments he was stepping closer towards her, bending down to kiss her forcefully and passionately while she leaned into him, knocking her unused headphones off of her head as they fell backwards slowly into the chair she’d been sitting in, a moment of passion coming on in a flash. They were in the middle of prying each other’s clothes off when Chiaki suddenly stopped, pushing Hajime away as hard as she could. “I don’t think we should do that,” she said, her face beginning to pale. “In fact, I think I’m gonna—” Her words were cut off by her whole body lurching forward, her cheeks bulging out slightly to contain whatever had just come up, and he quickly moved aside so that she could get up and take care of emptying her stomach on her own terms.

While that didn’t become a normal occurrence, it was a deterrent from whenever they’d start feeling romantic tension between them that seemed to need a resolution. It would always happen at the strangest times, whether it was when he was getting home or in the time before she’d go live on stream, and it always ended with her getting sick to some extent and him having to stand by helplessly and lamenting the ruined moment. Slowly, though, the instances of her getting sick started to lessen, but as they disappeared, other things started happening that were just as difficult to work around.

Such as, for instance, the almost overnight development of quite a round little stomach on her formerly flat abdomen. Now it wasn’t like Hajime frequently saw her in tight clothes, nor was it like he was allowed to touch up on her often, but it did come on completely unexpectedly when he got home to see her sitting in her chair, computer for streaming and games going full steam, with one of her favorite shirts on but rolled up so that it wasn’t stretched out over the larger stomach she now clearly had. “Oh, I have to call it a day here soon,” she said to the camera, taking a hand off her controller for a split second to wave to her husband as he entered. “I’ll be back same time tomorrow for more of whatever this is, but I have some important things to take care of.”

In minutes she was off-camera and was actually out of her chair, almost running towards him as he stared slack-jawed at how it felt like she’d doubled in size since the last time he’d seen her. “When did this happen?” he asked, motioning towards her still-exposed stomach and resisting touching it. “I can’t remember seeing you like this before.”

“It happened three months ago,” she replied completely seriously, her eyes looking to his but finding his gaze fixed elsewhere. “Or, as the doctor said today, like fourteen weeks ago, I think? Counting weeks when you’re pregnant is weird and I don’t get it.”

“That’s right, you went in today, how did that go?” Based on how she didn’t seem upset by anything it felt right for Hajime to assume that everything had gone fine, but he couldn’t exactly be sure. This _was_ the same woman who’d stared completely blankly at the first images they’d seen of the child she’d basically begged for, it was possible that something bad had happened and she hadn’t processed it yet.

It took a few moments of remembering for Chiaki to even have an answer to the question she’d been asked. “It was fine, everything is going okay,” she finally said, still looking at him even though he wasn’t returning the gesture. “She said we can see the baby again next time, and maybe we’ll be able to know what they are. Wouldn’t that be cool, to know what we’re having before we meet them?”

“I figured that was kind of the standard nowadays.” Giving a laugh, he finally stopped staring at her stomach to meet her eyes, which were shining in excitement that he hadn’t known about simply based on her tone of voice. “But if we know, we know. If we don’t, we don’t. It’s not a big deal to me, I just want to know they’re doing okay.”

“That’s good, because that’s how I feel too.” She stood still for a second, before reaching forward and hugging Hajime as tightly as she could, pressing everything she had up against him and waiting for his response. When he put one hand around her back and the other on the back of her head, she sighed contently. “We’re really going to be parents someday in the future, Hajime, and I’m not sure if I’m actually ready to do this.”

That was something he’d been dreading hearing come from her mouth the entire time, a realization that he knew she’d have eventually but he’d been hoping for long before this point (as in, at least more than fourteen weeks prior). “There’s not exactly much chance of backing out now, you know,” he reminded her, digging his fingers into her short hair and somewhat inwardly hoping that their future child had hair as soft and pastel-colored as she did, rather than like his own. “I mean, there are options we could look into, but we’ve gone this far, I think we’re going to be keeping the little one.”

“If you’re set on raising it, I can be too.” Even though those were the words she chose, Hajime knew very well that he’d be having to convince Chiaki to follow through with them time and time again. This was a decision she’d made too hastily, even though it had taken a long time for anything to happen, and now she was beginning to see the error of her ways much too late into things. Backing out when there was another life in the mix wasn’t possible, and she had to understand that her days as a game streamer with nothing going on in her life were quickly ending.

But it became much, much easier for her to feel comfortable in wanting to raise that child with the man she loved once she got to see it again. Even though she was the one that was actively growing it inside her, she wouldn’t say that she felt much attachment to it—after all, it was conceived solely to be a solution to a problem she hated dealing with—but all it took was being able to see the outline of its tiny face to sell her heart on loving it forever. There was no way of telling which one of them the child was going to look like, just based on that outline, but they did know that it was healthy, and that it seemed to be growing perfectly healthily in the womb it called home.

“Is this when we find out what they are?” Chiaki asked, her eyes transfixed on the screen that had gone from showing the child’s face to its other limbs, showing off whatever that could be picked up with the machine. “I would really like to know that, so I can feel like I know them better before I meet them.”

The tech running the exam laughed, before breaking into an explanation that she had no idea Chiaki wasn’t actually listening to. Hajime was listening, though, as he was able to hold his attention in multiple places at once and he could be watching what was happening on the screen while listening to the tech speaking. He was just as interested in finding out as Chiaki was, even though he was content either way and not finding out wouldn’t be the end of the world to him, but he knew that what they found out that day was not necessarily an end-all, be-all to the situation. There was always the chance that something could be missed or misread and that they’d end up with a child different than what they were expecting, but that wasn’t a possibility they needed to bank on.

By the time they were leaving the office, they’d gotten to get several more shots of their to-be child, which had been printed and carefully packaged in an envelope for them to keep as they wanted, and with those they could come up with a plan for how they were going to address the fact that they were expecting in the first place. “It’s weird that we haven’t told anyone yet, especially since…” Hajime glanced at Chiaki for a second, seeing how she was snuggling the envelope close to her chest and smiling so peacefully, and he cleared his throat to change his train of thought. “Anyway, it’ll make it easier now that we can say that we’re going to be having a baby girl, I think. Do you agree with that statement?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, it’ll be so much easier.” It was clear that Chiaki’s mind was somewhere else entirely, and all Hajime could do was hope that she came back into their reality sooner rather than later, so that they could get to the meat of the discussion. But for the whole ride home, as well as for the entire rest of the day, Chiaki didn’t say a word about things, so wrapped up in her own world that Hajime couldn’t get through to her even a little bit. That changed when they settled in for bed that evening, her curled up on her side of the bed with an extra pillow between her legs, while he was right beside her, a hand idly running up and down her lower back. “I don’t know if I want to tell people about any of this,” she admitted, a sadness to her voice that hurt him to hear. “I just know our friends will say we can’t handle this, and that we shouldn’t be doing this, and I…don’t want to know they think that.”

“Whoa, where’d that come from?” His words were coated in surprise, which was true to how he felt when he heard her express her worry. “I don’t think any of them have the right to say anything like that, especially given the kind of people they are. Think about it for a second, Chiaki. Think about the lives they’re all leading. Do you really believe that they’ll judge us for having a child?”

“They might,” she replied, before heaving a long sigh. “And that’s just our friends. I can’t imagine what my viewers are going to say, they already make fun of me for looking bigger than I used to, they’re never going to stop being rude when they know why.”

It was a difficult place to talk her out of, because her game streaming was so important to her and what she did on a daily basis, but Hajime didn’t know what else to do besides try to help her see the light. “Something tells me that you’re overthinking this. Streamers have families all the time, don’t they? What’s the big deal if you have one?”

“The fact that I’m a lady and there’s not many of us that are super popular.” Rarely did Chiaki sound like she was going to actually start crying, but that was one such moment, and it took all of Hajime’s strength to not stop what he was doing to comfort her. Right then, all he knew was that he needed to get her home so that they could talk things out in a more private place, because it was clear that she was experiencing a lot of emotions that her body wasn’t used to handling. “Please, Hajime, I think we need to keep this secret until we can’t anymore, just to make it easier.”

“Something tells me that hiding it from everyone is not making anything even remotely easier,” he replied, shooting that idea down the second she brought it to light. “I’m not saying that we have to make a big deal of it, but being honest with people is always the best course of action. Whatever you decide to do with your viewers, that’s one thing, but our friends deserve to know the truth, and they deserve to know it now.”

“Then you tell them, because I’m not saying a word.” She was closing in on herself, getting lost in all of her feelings that she wasn’t thinking through what she was saying, but there was no changing Chiaki’s mind on the matter. There was also no prying the envelope of pictures of their daughter out of her hands, and she made sure that it was in her possession at all times to keep it from leaking out into the world, which made Hajime’s job a lot harder than he’d expected. But he wasn’t a dumb man, and he knew almost every trick there was to getting Chiaki to cooperate, so all it would take was a bit of time and effort to get her to see at least a reflection of the light on the horizon.

All it took was casually mentioning to a couple friends that they had some exciting news to share to get her into the conversation, because the moment some sort of _secret_ was announced they were all jumping to ask Chiaki about it. That was typical for Hajime, as sad as it was, because just like his work life, his social life was often spent being pushed aside for everyone else. The one benefit to his friends wanting to talk to Chiaki over him about their news was that they were still happy for him when they found out that they were expecting a baby, unlike if his coworkers were to find out, because all they’d do would be ask if it was that damned Izuru having a child instead. In fact, once the initial shock wore off, the majority of their friends made it a point to talk to both of them equally (even though it was much easier to favor talking to Chiaki about things), and that was something that Hajime hadn’t seen coming. He’d assumed that everyone wouldn’t care about his thoughts or feelings and would instead only ask her about hers, and so when he would have questions asked of him he would come off as genuinely surprised when he answered.

It shouldn’t have come as so much of a shock to him, though, and he realized that after a few weeks of this raised level of attention he hadn’t ever seen before. “Do you think some of them care because they’ve got children of their own?” he asked Chiaki over dinner, which consisted of a reheated half of a pizza for her and a small portion of some microwave meal for him. “That’s the only reason I can see them talking to me about anything, because they know what’s in store for me.”

“I think that could be it, definitely,” she replied, her gaze drifting off to some point past his shoulder. “Everyone is being so kind with their advice and offers for help, but I don’t know if I want them to help or not. We can do this ourselves, can’t we, Hajime?”

He nodded almost immediately, knowing that while the help and kindness being shown to them was appreciated, there was no learning from their choices if everyone was stepping in to help them out. “I’m certain that we can. If some of them can have children and raise them at least somewhat correctly, there’s nothing stopping us from doing the same.”

“I hope all these babies can be friends.” Her attention snapping right to Hajime’s curious face, Chiaki gave him a sweet smile when she noticed how he was reacting to that statement. “Oh, right, I guess none of theirs really _are_ babies anymore, but…it’s the thought that counts. Maybe they can be, like, older sibling figures to our daughter? Does that work?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never met any of the kids you’re talking about, and I don’t think you have either.” Hajime knew _of_ the children she was bringing up, and he’d heard enough about them from their parents in the recent days, but he hadn’t seen any pictures of all but one of them, and he wasn’t even sure he knew any of their names. “I’m pretty sure that I’d rather our child be safe in our care than being forced to be friends with kids that neither of us can say are good influences.”

“Oh, right, that’s a good point.” Blinking a couple times as she let his words fully sink in, Chiaki fell silent after that, choosing to spend her time eating rather than talking more. When she finished, she left the table without a word—and even though he was still picking at his food, Hajime got up after her, stopping her from getting too far by grabbing her shoulders and holding her in place. “Hey, I was just going to go play something, you don’t have to grab me like this.”

“Why are you acting upset over what I said?” he asked, trying to get to the bottom of things before anything was allowed to spiral out of control. “This isn’t like you, and I’d like to know why you’re behaving like this.”

The way she tilted her head at him, giving him the single blankest stare she could manage, made him immediately regret touching her in the first place. In a move that she rarely acted on, she reached up with one hand and lifted one of his hands away from where it was grabbing her, dragging it down until it was being smashed onto the top of her stomach, with her hand still on top of his. “If you want to know why I’m acting like this, I want you to remember what I’m going through right now.”

“That was your decision, wasn’t it? You thought it would be best for you, and I tried talking you out of it and—” His words came to a halt when he felt something underneath his hand, a foreign sensation that he wasn’t quite sure how to describe. He wanted to be able to say what, exactly, it was he was feeling with complete certainty, but the thought that he was feeling what first came to his mind seemed rather unreal. “—Chiaki, why are you having me touch you right now, like this?” he finally asked, collecting his thoughts to some degree. “This is rather unlike you.”

“Oh, you didn’t feel it then,” she replied, a dejected tone to her voice. “I was hoping that maybe she’d be moving hard enough for you to feel her but…I guess not.”

Surprised that his initial thought had been correct, Hajime’s hand tensed up underneath Chiaki’s, not sure what he could say or do right then. “No, no, I did feel it, I just didn’t know what I was feeling. That’s her, huh? Is that what you’re telling me?”

She nodded, lifting her hand to brace her own chin with it. “It is, and I’m so happy that you’re able to feel that now too. Ever since I first felt her, I wanted to share it with you, and now that time is finally here.” Sighing contently, Chiaki looked into Hajime’s eyes with actual focus, a smile on her lips that showed how at peace she was. “I’m going to go play games now, so you can feel her move again some other time, if that’s okay with you.”

“When isn’t it okay with me?” It took until she’d pulled away from his hand and left the room for him to understand that she wasn’t asking for permission to go play her games, but rather making sure that he was fine with waiting to feel their child moving again. His hand slightly tingled at the thought of feeling that strange, foreign sensation underneath it ever again but he shrugged it off, knowing that it was just another part of his reality now, and that he would only get to experience it for a short period of time before he had something much bigger to be worrying about.

But now that she was moving, it felt so much more real that they were going to be having a living, breathing, squirming child in their lives in the near future. It was almost addicting to want to feel those tiny movements, but every time the desire to do so crossed Hajime’s mind it was when Chiaki was asleep or in the middle of gaming, and he knew better than to interrupt her in either instance. She seemed to know that he wanted to feel more of those motions, and made it a point to announce to him whenever she could that she was feeling them herself, but the only thing that managed to do was make him desire it more.

That act in itself completely obliterated any attempt she’d made at keeping her pregnancy secret from the people who watched her playing games, but to be completely fair to herself she hadn’t made it easy to hide anything in the first place. With all of the changes she’d made to her playing style, from shutting off her recording at random times to trying to keep her camera from going no lower than her neck, most of them had already assumed she was acting weird because she was having a baby, and when she finally confirmed it there was a lot of excitement on her behalf—in addition to a lot of other newfound problems.

“Someone in the stream said I should record her if she starts moving a lot, so we can look back on it in the future,” she told him a couple weeks later, after the novelty of the motions had been lost on her but he hadn’t been able to get enough of them. “That, or they just want to see the video for themselves. Hajime, do you think it’s weird that people want to see what I look like now?”

“It wouldn’t be weird if these weren’t strangers you’re talking about. I don’t know if I’m exactly comfortable with you inviting them into every aspect of your life right now.” She nodded slowly, taking in his opinion and considering it for herself, but he wasn’t sure she was going to accept it or keep doing her own thing. Chiaki really was an enigma that was hard to keep under control, and with how erratic her behavior could get he knew it to be best to stay hands-off if possible. “They already know where we live, if the daily food deliveries are anything to go by, we don’t need to let them in more.”

“Oh, they don’t know where we actually live, they just know what’s close by.” Closing her eyes, Chiaki took in a deep breath before adding, “And I know what’s close by, too. I really want more pizza right now, do you think I could—”

Without thinking, he blurted out, “No, are you crazy? You’re going to hurt yourself if all you eat is pizza!”

“—right, sorry, Hajime. I just…it’s what baby wants, and I want it too.” Her eyes reopening, she looked towards her streaming device and gave it a thoughtful gaze before deciding that she should listen to what she was being told for once. “I’ll get over it, I promise I won’t ask my viewers to send me food again today.”

“Or tomorrow, or the next day, or ever again, Chiaki. I don’t work so that a bunch of teenage boys and girls can buy you dinner instead.” Although the idea of not having to pay for their meals for a while seemed pleasant, especially with the mounting expenses directly related back to their child, Hajime wasn’t going to let them become reliant on the kindness of strangers to feed them. “If you want their help, you can have them send baby supplies or something, but that’s it.”

She chirped in excitement when she realized what he was implying. “I could have a baby shower on stream, so that everyone who’s on this journey with me can experience it! I love the idea so much, thank you!” And just like that he’d lost her to something else, and she was waddling away to go play games and talk about a hypothetical scenario that he hadn’t exactly approved of.

There was a lot of excitement when it came to the child, certainly, but for every gram of happiness he felt in regards to things, there were ten times that of anxieties and worries. With every passing day he grew more concerned about the wild ride that Chiaki was putting the unborn child on, knowing that her habits had barely changed for the better and that she wasn’t doing herself any favors at any point. Even though he’d told her she needed to not get food from the stream, he would come home from work to see her eating something they most definitely had not had in the house when he left, and she would make it a point to not waste any of it.

Between streaming, sleeping, eating, and going to her occasional appointment, there wasn’t much else that Chiaki was really doing. There was no exercise at all (which her doctor scolded her for every single time), there was no care as to what it was that she was eating (which was also a concern, especially when paired with the previous statement), and she was pushing herself to such late hours on long stretches of no movement that she was causing herself issues that could have been easily prevented. “Okay, we are going to talk about this in both good news and bad news,” the doctor said at one appointment, when they were roughly two months out from the baby’s due date. “Good news, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the child at this time.”

“That would be good news,” Chiaki replied, pressing her hands together and resting her head on them, as if she was admiring something cute, even though the only thing she was looking at was the doctor in front of her. “But if that’s good…what’s bad?”

“In order to maintain that statement’s truthfulness, something needs to change, as soon as today. Are you aware that someone of your initial size could possibly go through this wonderful time of her life without much in the way of permanent body changes?” It was not the most delicate of wordings, nor was it something that Chiaki wanted to hear, but sitting beside her, Hajime felt vindicated in hearing what he’d been warning her against coming to fruition. “You need to focus solely on your physical health right now, or else you may find that the life you lead after the birth is nothing like the one you’re expecting.”

Completely missing the point of what she was being told, Chiaki’s hands fell to resting on the top of her stomach, which even with a mid-winter chill outside was barely covered with a straining gaming shirt. “You mean that if I’m not careful, I’m still going to be dealing with my little monster even after I have this baby? So…couldn’t I just get rid of my parts and solve that problem?”

“Chiaki, she means that all your snacking and getting food ordered for you is making you weigh more than you should, she’s not talking about your other problem.” That was the bluntness that Chiaki needed in order to get it through her head that she was causing her own issues, and she burst into tears at the rawness of what he’d said.

The doctor looked at Hajime with stern eyes, and he shrugged off the judgmental gaze, even though she ultimately agreed with him. “Ahem, well, your husband is correct about that, but snacking _is_ fine if you do it responsibly. I would recommend switching to no unnatural sugars and limiting either the number of meals or the size of them, depending on how often you’re eating. I want to see you and your baby both be healthy and fit after this.”

“O-okay, but what if I c-c-can’t make it happen? Are we going to die?” Chiaki was going from one extreme to the other, and it took quite a bit of assurance that no, the likelihood of either of them dying was nothing to be worried with, and it was more of a well-being concern than anything else. She calmed down and accepted that she’d made a huge mistake, and nodded over and over again to show that she understood. “I promise I’ll stop getting things delivered, if it’s what’s best for my baby. I just want her to be okay…”

“And she will be, as long as you hold yourself to that.” The doctor looked at Hajime again and shook her head. “As for you, sir, please make sure that she doesn’t slip up too much. I know this is a stressful time for both of you but you need to hold her accountable.”

All he could think was how it seemed every moment of his life was spent needing to hold Chiaki accountable for her existence and her actions, but he said nothing beyond accepting the task. The silence remained until they were leaving the office, Chiaki making her next couple of appointments while he waited by the door for her, and he saw a couple coming towards the door to enter. Deciding to be a gentleman, he opened the door for them and got a kind thank you from them both, before they continued on their conversation as they entered, leaving him slightly stunned until Chiaki was right there with him. “Did you see those people?” he asked, motioning towards the couple checking in at the counter. “You walked right past them when you left, but did you see them?”

Chiaki put a finger to her chin as she thought. “I did, they’ve been here before when I’ve been here, but that’s been when you’ve been at work. What’s special about them?”

“It was just…nothing, really. Their conversation surprised me, made me think about something I hadn’t really thought much of before now.” As they walked to their car he considered continuing on with what he was talking about, but Chiaki didn’t seem to care about it and he didn’t know if discussing something another couple had been talking about was appropriate when he had no idea if she’d run and tell them the next time their paths crossed there at the office.

He did end up approaching it a different way a few days later, after having several back-to-back days of suffering at work where he wished he was dead and that everyone would leave him alone, or at least remember that his name was Hajime, not Izuru. It was about the time he got home and he found Chiaki asleep in her usual seat, a controller on the floor at her feet and the whole system shut down. That would have been concerning, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d just come down a road completely darkened from a power outage, and therefore he was somewhat expecting his dear wife to be taking a nap.

After getting more comfortable and relaxing for a moment with a cool splash of water on his face in a nearly pitch-black bathroom, he went back out to the main room and gently shook Chiaki awake by touching her shoulder. “Hmm, I don’t think I want that, thank you,” she mumbled in reply, obviously in the middle of a dream. “I can do it by myself, it can’t be that hard. What’s one set of stairs when I have legs?”

“Come on, wake up,” he grumbled, shaking her again to no avail, and so he sat down next to her just to wait, watching how her lips would occasionally tremor with half-words behind them but say nothing much at all. While he was sitting there, the thought to rest his hand on her stomach and see if he could feel the baby crossed his mind, but he ignored it; maintaining that stance proved impossible but if she was asleep, he could do something else, and so he positioned himself so that he could lean over and rest his head on the side of her stomach, the place where he’d seen the smallest lump of a foot or hand poke out once or twice. It wasn’t every day that she was unable to be woken up in a prime position for that sort of physical touch, and he was going to take all the advantage he could.

Right as he was beginning to get comfortable, he could hear the whirring of the electrical currents coming back to life, and just like clockwork the moment the TV came back on, Chiaki’s eyes were wide open and she was staring down at a horrified-looking Hajime. “Am I a pillow now?” she asked, tears beginning to brim in her eyes. “I know I’m round and fluffy but I didn’t think I was a pillow…”

“No, that’s not it, I just wanted to see if she was moving around!” He sat right back up and tried to do damage control with the position he’d been caught in, and that was when he thought it would be perfect time to bring up what he’d been thinking about for days. “I mean, I bet it’s hard to do things when she’s active, isn’t it?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

He noticed she wasn’t trying to force those tears, which was a good sign. “And I didn’t feel her moving at all right then, so is this a time she sleeps or something?” Another positive response, punctuated with a quiet yawn as she carefully used her foot to move the controller she’d dropped closer to him, so that he could bend down and pick it up (something that she wasn’t able to do anymore, and was thankful to have him around for). “Well, I was thinking, maybe we could go try to do something at about this time some day soon. Your birthday’s coming up and we should use it to go on one last date before we’re parents, don’t you think?”

“I already have birthday plans.” For some reason, Chiaki’s matter-of-fact statement felt like a slap across Hajime’s face, and when he recoiled from it he nearly dropped her controller back onto the floor to leave it there. “Oh, oh no, did I forget to tell you about those? Mahiru and Hiyoko and Akane and I are going to go do something on my birthday, and I don’t know what it is but Hiyoko said it’ll be fun and Mahiru said that you can come with too.”

“Probably pictures, knowing her.” Hajime knew he’d spoken to Mahiru about if she was familiar with taking baby-related pictures before, and she’d laughed and said it was a new hobby that she’d gotten to be very good at, but he hadn’t asked anything about pictures before that. “You’ll have a good time, I’m sure.”  
“You mean you won’t come with me?” Chiaki’s bottom lip trembled as she asked the question, feeling like she’d been rejected right there. “But Hajime, you want to celebrate my birthday with me, don’t you?”

“Sure I do, but I’m going to let you do something with your friends first and foremost, since you’ll have a lot less time with them in the future.” Already he was trying to come up with a new plan for handling the celebration on Chiaki’s birthday, having remembered from hearing that couple’s conversation that there was so much less that could be done to mark an occasion like that. “Then when you’re done with them, I’ll have something here waiting for you, how about that?”

The pouting stopped and Chiaki thought hard and deep about what was being proposed, before she replied, “I guess that’s acceptable enough for me. Hopefully nothing bad happens when I’m with my friends, I really don’t want to get hurt and maybe hurt the baby too.”

“No, that makes perfect sense, glad to see you thinking this through, Chiaki.” It had only taken the better part of the whole pregnancy for Chiaki’s brain to start taking things seriously and to consider more than just her basic wants, but he was happy to hear her making strides in the right direction.

* * *

The day of her birthday itself should have been a lot less stressful, but when Hajime woke up to a lonely bedroom and no sign of Chiaki anywhere in the house, he was immediately in panic mode, calling her phone and finding it endlessly going to voicemail. It took calling Mahiru twice and Hiyoko once for him to finally get an answer from Akane, who brushed off his concern as being overprotective. “She’s here with us, we’re gettin' her nails done right now, then it’s off to everythin’ else. Don’t you worry about a thing, got it?”

“Er, yeah, I’ve got it.” He’d barely been able to get those words out before she was hanging up and he was less worried about where Chiaki was, but instead wondering how long their excursion would truly be. If he had enough time to get things set up, he would have quite the surprise for her to walk back into their home to, and he was rather excited at the prospect of having all sorts of new, shiny things for her to enjoy.

Except the things he was acquiring that day weren’t really new, and most of them weren’t shiny. One of the biggest stressors in the whole “becoming parents” journey had been, by far, the idea of needing to prepare for a child, and so he’d been in contact with some of their friends who’d already had children of their own, asking for hand-me-downs and a good collection of starter items to bring into the home for when the baby arrived. He’d been waiting for a good time where he could get everything sorted out while Chiaki wasn’t home, and even though his plans for how they’d mark her birthday had gotten thrown to the wayside, he was able to use the time in some productive manner.

Hajime had been expecting maybe a few things here and there to be delivered late that morning, once he’d sent out all of the messages saying that the time was upon them, but he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of baby goods dropped off at the front door that day, by a couple of fathers who’d had daughters of their own that had needed such belongings once upon a time. The only things that weren’t gifted to him right then were the consumable goods, the diapers and bottles and things that needed to be carefully selected or purchased new, as well as a crib, a carseat, and basic furniture for the baby’s room. Everything else was more or less taken care of, even though there would be plenty of room for adding to the collection over time.

His gratefulness had extended as far as offering the men money for their services and both turned him down, each giving their own reason for why they didn’t need a handout from him (boiling down to the fact that they had enough money of their own and could always be counted on to help a friend they had loose contact with). Once everything was inside the house it came time to start organizing it into some semblance of a nursery, while waiting for the rest of the furniture to come into their lives. It was while he was sorting through the gifted clothing that he came to terms with how small this child was going to be when they met her, and how she was going to become the most precious thing either of them had ever known, changing their lives forever upon first meeting.

Most of the stuff would need Chiaki’s stamp of approval—or at least her standard blank stare—before it was properly accepted into their small collection of baby goods they’d already put together, but some of the things he wasn’t giving up for anything. They were just cute, simple outfits with their tags still on them, but he had made the mistake of imagining a miniature Chiaki wearing them, and that was enough to convince him that they needed to keep them. The tiny dresses with ruffles and bows, the pinks and purples and pale yellows, everything was so cute and so hard to resist getting attached to, and Hajime knew that if he was struggling to keep his composure about things, his wife was going to have it worse.

When he heard the front door unlatch and come open, he dashed out of the space that they’d set aside for the child to meet Chiaki when she entered, but it wasn’t her that was standing in his home when he got there. “Bet you weren’t expecting to see me, were you?” Mahiru asked, giving a wave and a smile, her freckled cheeks red from the cold breeze that had been blowing all day. “She’ll be right in, I just wanted to see your face when you see her.”

“When I…what?” It had happened so fast that Hajime didn’t know how else to react, but he did notice that Mahiru was holding her camera in her other hand, waiting for a picture-perfect moment of some sort. His eyes shifted towards the door, where he could hear Chiaki outside saying something about how tired all the walking they’d done had made her, but when she stepped into view he let out a loud gasp and could see the flash of the camera going off nearby. “What did they do to you, Chiaki?”

“Oh, we went shopping and got our nails done and…uh, why are you staring at me?” A usual outfit for Chiaki was a sweater or a gaming shirt, formerly baggy on her but as time had gone on they’d all gotten more snug on her growing body, but she was standing in the doorway wearing a short dress that pinched right above the start of her stomach’s curve, hanging loose and straight down once it got past the widest point. “Is there something on my face?”

He had to collect himself, trying not to get too distracted by the way the dress was also tight across her chest and showed off how much that had grown as well. “N-no, not at all, you just look amazing right now. Like, incredibly amazing.”

“Thanks, Hiyoko picked this dress out for me off a clearance rack. She said it would be too long for her so it would be perfect for me.” Not quite catching on that he was distracted by how tight the dress was overall, Chiaki came into the door fully, looking at Mahiru and how she had turned the camera to her new subject. “Are you still taking pictures of me? I thought you said the ones we got at the mall were good enough.”

Mahiru laughed, lowering her camera after checking its screen. “I wasn’t getting any of you, don’t worry. If there’s anyone out in the world who’s interested in gamer mom photoshoots, I think what we did earlier will be enough to satiate them.”

“Okay, cool. I’m really tired, all of this walking has been too much for me.” Chiaki went straight for her normal spot in the room, not caring about anything else that may have been going on around her. “I’m glad we got to do that shopping, and you helped me a lot with name stuff and—”

“Hold on, name stuff?” Hajime’s ears had perked up at that point, finally pulling himself out of his awestruck state at seeing how lovely they’d made Chiaki look on her birthday. “You were talking about names? We haven’t even done that!”

“—I have ideas, Hajime. You need to let me tell you now that my friends have heard them, since they liked them.” Giving a big sigh, Chiaki stretched back in her seat and smacked her lips a few times as she really settled in. “But not right now, I’m too tired to do anything else except sleep.”

He knew trying to talk through things with her would be a losing battle, so he turned to Mahiru instead. “Is that true? Was she really talking about names with you three?”

“It is, but…” Mahiru motioned towards the door. “Let’s go outside where she won’t hear us so we can talk about this. I suppose it’s best you hear it now before this goes on too much longer, but don’t get mad at me when you hear it.” There was no reason for him to think he would need to get mad, so he followed her lead and she took him out to where Akane and Hiyoko, both bundled up in jackets and holding several bags between them, were waiting for their arrival. “So, ladies, which one of us tells him the sorts of ‘names’ Chiaki’s considering for that poor, poor child.”

“They’re all video game names!” Hiyoko blurted out, before cringing at how loudly she’d yelled it. “I mean, duh, they’re video game names, but they’re all bad names or they’re stupid names or they’re just not good for an actual human child.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of kids being named after some stupid stuff, but some of those names were the worst. You’ve gotta stop her, or else she’s gonna ruin your kid’s life forever.” Akane’s eyes drifted to the bags she was holding, only to push them in Hajime’s direction. “Also, this stuff’s on us for you guys. Lots of baby gear, figured you’d probably want it and since we were out with Chiaki we kinda…got it behind her back. She doesn’t notice much, y’know?”

“I’m well aware of how little she notices.” If he wasn’t aware of it, there would have been a problem, but Hajime wasn’t going to point that fact out to Akane when she’d just done something rather sweet for them. “Thanks for this, all three of you. You took Chiaki out, gave her a nice day, made her look the best she’s looked in ages, and even bought us things. I don’t know how to repay you.”

“That’s easy, just keep her happy. And let us see the baby when the time comes, with a _good_ name.” Mahiru made sure to emphasize the right word in that sentence and everyone laughed, and soon the ladies were going their separate ways, while Hajime struggled to get back inside with all of the things that both Akane and Hiyoko had been holding. The sight he was greeted by when he did make it in was one that he wished he could see every day, Chiaki in a dress looking peaceful as she slept, but he knew that expecting it more than once would be a lost cause.

Instead, he set everything down and began going through it much like he’d gone through everything before, noticing that these outfits and toys were definitely picked out with Chiaki’s interests in mind. There were onesies that mentioned gaming, toy controllers and plush game characters, and most of all, a bag to hold necessities in that was decorated in the symbols that were found on some of the controllers she owned. “Everyone really wants to see us succeed as parents,” he said to himself, looking from the bag and everything around it to Chiaki, her hands lazily interlaced and wrapped around her stomach. “I don’t know if we’re going to meet their expectations, but I know we’re trying.”

“I think we’ll be just fine,” she replied, surprising him because he could have sworn she was actually asleep. “I bet they told you about the names I told them, but do you want to know a secret, Hajime? None of them were anything I really considered. I…have one that I think I won’t let go of, and you might like it when you hear it.”

“Shouldn’t you hope that I will like it?”

She opened her eyes and looked over at him, gazing right past the new belongings in their lives. “True, I should hope for that. Would you like to hear it, so I know how you feel?”

“That’d be great, but before you do that…” He hastily got up from where he’d been sitting to sort and headed to where everything else had been stockpiled, pulling out the first newborn-sized dress he saw and bringing it back out to hand to Chiaki. “Would it fit a child wearing this dress when we bring her home?”

“Oh, that’s pretty,” she remarked, taking the dress into her hands before laying it on top of her own, showing how small it was compared to her stomach. “I think it will fit her just fine, it’s a peachy color and…the name I like, it means peach. Peach and hope, actually, and I _hope_ you’ll like it so…”

“Have you been doing name research without me?” he asked, teasingly, and she giggled, giving away that she had been. “That’s fine, I’m sure you have a reason why you’ve waited this long to want to talk about this.”

She touched the dress again, before bringing her hand up to touch near her heart, a content smile forming on her lips. “I wanted to make sure it was the right one before I told you. And I think…no, I know it’s the right name for her.”

“Then get on with it, I have things I want to show you before it gets too much later.” He hoped he didn’t sound too impatient, but he felt he’d made so much progress in getting things prepared that he wanted to share with her. Spending all night waiting for her to get around to telling him the name she’d chosen was just going to be too long.

“I want to name her Momoki. No, not want to, I am going to. That’s going to be her name.” The smile had only grown as she’d said the name, and Hajime had to admit that it did sound rather pleasant to hear her say it, but he needed to take a moment to think about it belonging to an actual person—to the person he’d helped create—before he could nod and accept it. “I’m glad you agree, Hajime. But this stays between us until after everyone gets to meet her, I don’t want to hear that someone else already chose that name and that I can’t use it.”

“Something tells me that it’s not me that needs to worry about keeping it secret, since I’m not the one who talks endlessly about things on camera with strangers watching me. Now get up, we need to look at what I got taken care of today.” He had to help Chiaki get to her feet but he soon had her in the room with all of the somewhat organized baby things, and she was predictably a crying mess seeing all of the things that he’d gotten for their child.

That teary-eyed attitude did not change over the following month, as it got to the point that any time someone so much as mentioned babies around Chiaki she would break out into loud sobs that she couldn’t control. Her whole body was emotionally gearing up for the sleepless nights that were coming and she was a wreck because of it, even when she tried to hold it together for streams or for visits with friends, of which there were plenty. It seemed that in those last days before the unknown was upon them, everyone wanted to check in and make sure they were properly set up for when they got to bring their baby home. That meant a lot of help around to put together furniture and star as special guests on some game streams, but as it came down to the final weeks before the due date they were able to say that they had just about everything perfectly in place.

The one thing that Hajime wished he could change was his work schedule, which he couldn’t adjust until he knew exactly when he needed to be gone. Given that most of the people he worked with couldn’t remember his name to save their lives, talking to them about needing time off was nearly impossible, and he’d already gotten under management’s skin for all of the days he’d previously left early for appointments. He had gotten approval to get two uninterrupted weeks off, but when those started he had no idea, and he was secretly hoping he’d manage to get them started a few days before the baby was born so that he had a little time to breathe before jumping into that next chapter of his life.

Every day when he’d come home from work at that point, his first order of business was to ask Chiaki exactly how she was feeling. “I’m fine, Hajime,” she would reply without fail, regardless of what she was doing. “You don’t need to worry about me.” If she was in the middle of a game she’d explain to whoever was watching her that he was being a worrier and that he needed to chill about things, but if she wasn’t gaming she’d explain that if something wasn’t right she’d tell him right away.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he told her, knowing that she’d most likely forget she’d said anything on the topic in the first place. “You just wait and see.”

The routine went on for many days in a row, to the point that he could already hear her giving her answer in his mind before he’d even asked the question. But the day that he came home and she didn’t immediately respond in her usual way, he had to stand in the doorway and look at her, watching her playing her game as if everything was in order. Except, just looking at her, he knew it wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see if you can spot where I took a months-long writing hiatus with this fic, lol


	3. Chapter 3

Everything began exactly as rehearsed, with Hajime closing the door and acting like he hadn’t just seen Chiaki sitting in a slightly different position, with her face somewhat contorted as if she was trying too hard to focus. “How are you feeling right now?” he repeated asking, noticing that there was no game audio playing as the background noise to their conversation. This came with a silent response, her glancing away from what she was focused on to give him a faint smile. “Chiaki, that’s not an answer.”

“I don’t know how to answer, then,” she replied, which went off-script and was cause for more concern in his mind. She wasn’t looking away from him, she wasn’t moving her hands on the controller, she wasn’t even apologizing to her viewers for his yet-again interruption from her stream. “It’s not fine, but I don’t know what it is.”

Right away his heart sank, making lovely friends with his stomach as he rushed towards her, not even noticing that she hadn’t been playing a game at all until her controller fell to the wayside and him instinctively trying to pick it up had her telling him there was no need for it. “How long have you been feeling like this?” There were so many questions he wanted to give a voice to, but none of them felt appropriate, none of them felt like they needed to be answered in that moment. “Tell me, please!”

“Since a couple hours ago, I had to get off-stream because my viewers were telling me I needed to go.” She forced a stronger smile on her lips, but no sooner had she tried flashing her teeth was she gritting them, her bottom lip a casualty as she ground down into it. As he watched, he saw her reaching for the sides of her stomach, before trying to get her hands as far around to her back as she could while sitting. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, but it’s—”

“We’re leaving, right now.” Sure, Hajime had just gotten home from work and would have liked to be able to relax and shrug off the stress of his job, but he was almost positive that Chiaki had failed to alert him to the fact that she had gone into labor earlier and was now trying to play it off as if nothing was wrong. “Stand up, I’ll get your bag and everything so we can go. I can’t believe you didn’t call me or something, that’s irresponsible and I’m disappointed in you.”

“—Hajime, I didn’t want to worry you.” Moving her arms so she could use them to support herself as she tried getting to her feet, Chiaki seemed to be disoriented and wobbly as she finally managed to stand. It was only when she was up that he could see that she’d put a towel down underneath her at some point, which had collected some sort of fluid during the day. She could see his gaping mouth at the sight, and she tried defending her decision: “I looked it up, and everything said that there can be a lot of time between the water breaking and the baby being born, so I think we’re okay. Maybe.”

He was trying his best not to lose his calm demeanor at the moment, looking between the towel full of fluid and his darling wife staring at him like he was overreacting about things. “I need you to go to the car, I’ll meet you out there.”

“I’m not dressed for the occasion.”

Taking in a sharp breath, Hajime stared her straight in her innocent-looking eyes and told her, “It doesn’t _matter_ what you’re wearing. They’ll make you change when we’re there. Now go, before anything gets worse.” She took a second before nodding and heading for the door, and as soon as he could move without fear of her choosing to sit back down, he was dashing to where they’d stored the bag of things to take with them when the moment came. It wasn’t much, nor was it flashy, but it was contained everything they’d been told to take with them, from clothes to comfort items, and once he had it in his hand it didn’t matter what else was going on in that house. They were leaving right then, and there was nothing that was stopping him.

Not even Chiaki’s insistence that he go back inside and grab one of her handheld game systems, because the one they’d packed wasn’t the one she wanted to play right then. He firmly told her that there was nothing short of a natural disaster that would get him to go back inside and she huffed, just erratically enough that he thought she was experiencing another wave of pain until she got over herself and actually got in the car like he’d previously told her to. Their ride was frantic, and Hajime would have confessed to anyone who’d dared to pull him over for careless driving that he had a lot going on right then, the biggest thing being that his child was about to be born, but they arrived without any issue and were able to get checked in quickly.

Perhaps it was the crazed look in his eyes, or the completely bored one in hers, but it wasn’t until the nurses had gotten her into a bed and had done an exam to see what they were working with that anyone believed she was in any sort of labor. “I didn’t realize I was a math textbook, or even a ruler,” Chiaki remarked when the room had cleared after the initial exam and they were waiting for the doctor to come in. “I didn’t know they’d be measuring me in centimeters like that.”

“And you’re the one who insisted you were ready to have a child,” he grumbled, sitting in a chair next to her bed with his hands curled under his chin, leaning his elbows into his thighs. “I should have known you weren’t ready, you can’t take any of this seriously at all, you didn’t even know that being dilated six centimeters isn’t something you should be at home with.”

“Why would I need to know that, if you knew?” She was trying to be cute, and as much as it would have worked otherwise, the pressure of the moment was too much on Hajime’s shoulders for him to allow himself to be distracted by her. Realizing that, she began looking around at the room she’d been given, before focusing on the needles and IVs in her arm, taped down so that she couldn’t disrupt them. “I wonder what kinds of things they’re going to give me. It takes a lot of painkiller for it to work.”

“Good thing they have strong things to give you when you’re giving birth,” Hajime replied, hating that he knew so much more about what was going to happen than she did, even though they’d both been to the classes the hospital required, they’d both heard their friends talking about the choices that could be made, and they’d both had access to the same materials at home. “Provided you can have them at this point, since you waited so long to let me know you needed to get over here.”

She gave a few soft hums, tapping the taped-down needles with a finger, before turning to him with a peaceful expression. “I didn’t want to worry you,” she reminded him, “and also it happened so much earlier today that I didn’t want to keep you from work longer than I already do.”

“How much earlier, Chiaki.” Not a question, a statement that he wanted her to really think about before replying to. When she shrugged, he tried to get the information out of her a different way. “What time do you remember it being when it happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think it was before I started my lunchtime stream?” Chiaki moved her finger from the tape to her chin, as she thought about what the time had been. “I know the first time I felt a big something was during the stream, though. It’d been happening all morning but it was a big one and that was when my viewers got worried about me.”

With every word she was dropping on him, Hajime was getting more and more annoyed with the situation and how she’d completely mishandled it. But trying to chew her out on that in the hospital room was risky, and he didn’t want to make an already stressful situation worse for both of them, so he kept all of his anger bottled up inside. The nurses and doctors came and went, checking on her every so often to see when they’d be able to progress, and at one point they came in bringing strong drugs that were meant to numb the pain that she was going to be going through in, if all went well, a relatively short period of time. By the time the giant needle was present, and she was having to roll onto her side for them to inject it into her spinal column, she’d started to find annoyances in the situation as well, to the point that she’d actually snapped at one of the nurses begging for something to take the edge off of the pain she was feeling.

If it was bad enough that she, having dealt with incredibly miserable pain for a large part of her life, was in desperate need for help, then it was not anything that Hajime wanted to imagine having to go through. He did feel for Chiaki, having to come to the ultimate conclusion of the decision she’d made, but any sort of sympathy he might have had for her went out the window when she was feeling more medicated and less like she was getting ripped in half every few minutes, and she’d gone right back to talking about how it wasn’t that big of a deal at all. “Maybe I should have listened to you and just let you go through this at home, then,” he said, wanting her to really think about what was going on. “Since it doesn’t seem to be too much of an issue.”

“I don’t know how to give birth a baby on my own, and you don’t know how to assist. It wouldn’t work.” She just seemed to be so clueless about what was happening and how she was behaving, and it was hard to keep giving her passes for the actions she was making. But then her entire attitude changed, and she began to take things seriously. “I hope she comes soon, I want to meet my little Momoki before the end of the day.”

“That’d be nice,” he agreed, before realizing that the following day was a work day, and the one after it as well—the curse of working at an office that did business every day. “I need to call my boss and let him know we’re here, so I can get those two weeks off, or else I’ve got to be there bright and early tomorrow and I don’t think I’ll want to do that, no matter what happens here today.” Just the idea of having to drag himself into work after being at the hospital the previous night was a miserable idea, and if she was still in labor with no baby in sight he wouldn’t be able to focus on his job once he got there. “Do you think I can step out and make that call real fast?”

“Sure, I have no idea what’s happening and when,” she admitted, a fact that he knew to be true based on how she wasn’t even reacting too much to the now-frequent contractions she was going through. He thanked her for the understanding and slipped out into the hall, heading to the closest waiting area to call his boss and leave a message about the happy news he had to share. It was maybe a five-minute ordeal at the most, but when he got back to the room there were doctors aplenty and several nurses by the door waiting for his return.

As it turned out, when he’d left they’d come in for a routine check and found that she was dilated enough to begin getting into the next stage of labor, but they didn’t want her to even attempt to push until he was back to be present for it. From there, for the next several hours into the hours where late night and early morning blended together without any clear indication of which it was, it was a lot of frustrated screaming, a lot of attempts at getting someone who couldn’t feel her lower half to try and push, and a lot of Hajime thinking that he was going to lose his mind over how horribly things were going. Nothing was wrong, there was no indication to believe that mother or child were in any form of distress, it just seemed like something was keeping the baby from progressing more than she already had.

Ideas were thrown around for what to do, but every single one was shot down by Chiaki in her exhausted, medication-waning state. “I don’t _want_ you to cut me open, I don’t _want_ you to pull her out, I _want_ this to happen naturally and without anything going wrong!” she yelled, a loud voice coming out of someone usually so soft-spoken. “I’ll keep going until this goes how I want it to, I swear!”

“Ma’am, if you get worked up…” one of the doctors cautioned, but Chiaki was not having any of it. She tried to kick out with one of her legs but awkwardly let it fall from its position in the stirrups, nearly knocking into a doctor positioned below it. Fixing that mess was yet another embarrassment that Hajime had to witness, and he almost wished that he hadn’t called his boss and had an excuse to leave for a while.

Eventually things got back on track, and somewhere mid-morning, with the sun beaming into the window of the room, the child’s head made an appearance in the world, followed quickly by the rest of her. It was a glorious moment, one that could have only been better if the mother of said child wasn’t acting like a kid herself in demanding that they give her the baby. Right as Hajime decided he wasn’t going to let her behavior continue, the audience of his scolding be damned, the doctors placed the still-dirtied baby on Chiaki’s chest, the girl squealing and trying to squirm even after she’d been laid down.

“Wait…don’t babies usually find it calming to hear their mother’s heartbeat?” he asked, looking from the baby (who looked more like an alien than any child he’d ever seen) to the doctor waiting to take her back. “Why hasn’t she stopped moving around so much?”

“It’ll come in time,” he was assured, and after the initial moment of bonding was over they took the child back to clean her up, allowing him to cut the cord and severing the last physical bond between the two before they did their work. They cleaned her from head to toe, measuring her in every way possible, and when she was presented to her mother once again she was still fussy and still trying to move as much as she could, but she was swaddled and ready to be held.

That was the first proper glimpse of their daughter they got, as she was red-faced and giving pitiful screams there in her mother’s arms. “There’s no need to cry, Momoki,” Chiaki told the girl, her voice hoarse from the screaming she’d done herself. “Mommy’s got you, I’m here for you and you don’t need to be sad.”

“That’s the most motherly I’ve heard you get,” Hajime said with a laugh, before leaning in to get a closer look at the girl, with her squashed face and misshapen head (which as he was watching got covered by a hat by one of the nurses), everything else about her obscured by her swaddle. “I can’t believe that she’s, well, normal. It’s good to know that even people like us can have a perfectly normal child.”

“Of course she’s normal, she’s our baby and we did a good job with her.”

From there until they got to leave the hospital two days later—not that anything was wrong with Momoki, but rather there had been some severe tearing in the birthing process that needed attention, and Chiaki needed the safe place to start healing from it—everything seemed to be perfectly fine. The rifts in the relationship that the hiding of labor had caused were patched up the moment they’d both gotten to see the girl’s face, and she did eventually take to being comforted by her mother’s heartbeat and was much calmer when being held by the mother who promised to dote on her for as long as she lived. It began to feel like a new, positive chapter had started for them, and Hajime would have been lying if he said he didn’t see things only getting better from there.

That all changed when they went in for their baby’s first appointment the day after they’d been released from the hospital, where they were all barely awake and both adults had begun feeling frazzled at how frequent Momoki would start crying. The pediatrician assured them that a newborn being so quick to cry was normal and that she’d grow out of it in time, and then the exam that had been arranged began, checking every measurement that could be checked on such a small little girl. It was at the end of everything, when the child was back in her mother’s arms and was actively fussing, that the pediatrician drew herself a chair and sat down, to be on the level of the parents. “Was it brought up previously that she seems to have some sort of hearing deficiency?” she asked, sounding gravely serious, and even in their tired states both Hajime and Chiaki couldn’t recall that ever coming up. “I see, well, that might have been an oversight on the part of whoever was caring for her previously.”

“That sounds like you found something that’s not right,” Hajime said, trying not to sound concerned with what was being discussed. “You’re going to tell us that you think it’s nothing to worry about, aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid that isn’t much of an option right now. I don’t have a solid diagnosis at the moment, and it may take a few days before I can safely say what’s wrong, but she doesn’t seem to respond on one side at all, and the other…” The pediatrician sighed, referring to her notes she’d taken while giving the exam. “At best, she may have half her auditory processing ability on the other side. At worst, she may have ten, perhaps fifteen percent of it. There may be ways to give her more, on that side anyway, but she’ll always be unable to hear like the rest of us.”

Every single word that was spoken was a blow to the couple, who’d believed that their child was perfectly fine and had nothing wrong with her in the slightest. Things that Hajime had noticed in the short amount of time they’d been with Momoki began to make sense, between how she fussed more if it was her left ear pressed to her mother’s chest compared to the right ear and how she didn’t seem to respond to many noises at all, rarely even her own. “So, um, what can we do to fix it?” Chiaki sounded timid as she asked her question, looking down at the calming face of the child who’d started drifting to sleep even though she’d just been so upset at the world. “I don’t want her to be broken.”

“She isn’t broken, by any means. Many children have hearing disabilities that they are able to overcome in various ways.” From there it was listing off a bunch of potential ways to approach the problem, but they heavily depended on the extent of Momoki’s hearing loss, and because they didn’t know that at the moment it was difficult to be certain what could be done. The pediatrician seemed confident in the fact that they’d be able to give her a decent amount of hearing back, even if it wouldn’t be perfect, and when the parents walked out of the office they knew they had a _lot_ to think about in the coming days.

When the solid diagnosis came in after another round of testing and more conversations where potential remedies were listed, neither Chiaki nor Hajime knew how to take what was being dropped on their shoulders: their perfect little girl, who’d done nothing to deserve such a horrible fate, was completely deaf in one ear, and just about the same in the other, only able to respond to incredibly loud noises. There would be little that could be done to fix the problem outside of invasive surgeries and bulky devices, and even then it would bring her hearing to still well outside of what was considered “normal.”

“What do we do, Hajime?” Chiaki tearfully asked, bouncing Momoki in her arms as the girl fitfully shook, her screaming having gone nearly silent from how overworked her vocal cords had been in just over a week of life. “I don’t want her to go through anything like surgeries while she’s so little, but I…I want her to hear.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, not sure what else there was that he was supposed to say. “I want what’s best for her, but she’s so young, there’s got to be some way this will reverse itself. The doctors at her birth didn’t notice it, so maybe there’s just some mistake here.”

There wasn’t any mistake at all, as they learned in the following weeks and months, where no action was taken except making sure to cater everything to the side the baby could hear from. She always nestled that ear towards whichever parent was holding her, she always ended up sleeping with that ear up, she even seemed to turn her head so that was the ear more easily able to pick up sounds, and yet, despite seeing it daily with how she acted, neither of her parents wanted to make a decision on her behalf. Chiaki was scared that she’d already made decisions that had hurt the child, and she didn’t want to make more that she’d regret, while Hajime had done the research and had found the list of potential consequences with the surgeries that Momoki would have to go through, all of which had put him off from wanting to make that decision.

So instead of doing something to correct the issue, they let it stagnate and become a part of their daily lives, and that choice made all the difference. If anything, it came as a bit of a positive to have a daughter unable to hear just about everything in her own home, because her mother’s loud gaming setup would have been disruptive to her life if she’d been able to hear it. There was also the completely tragic (and expected) pained screaming that kicked up once again when Momoki was about six months old, the entire reason for her being conceived and born in the first place ultimately ending up useless because the medical issues that had riddled Chiaki the whole time came back with a vengeance.

On the days where Chiaki was battling her monster and couldn’t get out of bed, much less take care of a baby, Hajime had to make the choice of either staying home or finding someone who could babysit in a pinch. Knowing that he’d need to find someone who’d be willing to put up with Chiaki’s issues as well as caring for an infant, he frequently called on some of their friends who’d been there for them in the past. Sure, whenever he’d come home after a day of Akane or Hiyoko helping babysit he’d find the place dirtied, missing either food or household objects, but he’d find that Momoki was well-cared for and Chiaki hadn’t been able to disrupt his workday to get help she needed.

Those days were the absolute worst, where he’d be caring for Momoki on his own after a day of work, because Chiaki couldn’t do anything more than moan and whine in bed about how much pain she was in, as he’d been convinced that by having a child, days like that wouldn’t happen. He’d been deluded into thinking that by creating a huge financial burden, they’d eliminate a little monster and get it out of their lives; the problem with little monsters was that they weren’t ever actually that little to begin with, and Chiaki’s cute pet name for her medical issue had suckered them both into thinking it could be easily solved. At times he wondered if that being the reason for having Momoki had been the direct cause of their daughter’s own problems, but he couldn’t saddle Chiaki with the guilt that she’d been responsible for their daughter’s deafness.

As time went on, things seemed to stay exactly as they were, if not getting worse. While Momoki grew and began to learn the world around her, it wasn’t Chiaki (who stayed at home all the time because of her streaming being her job) to teach her things. It was Hajime, every time he had the chance, who was breaking out books about sign language and about shapes and colors with the intent of giving the girl a good start on her education. She learned to sit, and crawl, and pull herself to standing with his supervision, with Chiaki occasionally chiming in about this-or-that, and it was at about the time that she’d turned a year old that she was taking her first steps as well as using her first signs solidly. Momoki made a lot of noises, screeches and babbles and laughs, but actually forming words wasn’t something that came naturally to her, much like being a proper parent didn’t come naturally to her mother even after everything.

If it was easier to rely on Chiaki’s streaming money, Hajime certainly would have quit his job and taken to being a father full-time instead of having to balance work and home. His office work was as miserable as ever, with his coworkers barely caring about him as a human and still, predictably, saddling him with the wrong name in all conversations, and getting out of there would have been perfect for his mental health. Besides, he could see it while he was at home, how Chiaki’s reliable interactions with Momoki came whenever she wanted to show her off on stream, or occasionally whenever she wanted to try to teach the girl how to hold a controller. The fact that she wanted to introduce her to gaming so young was admirable, but Hajime knew that there was groundwork that needed to be put in place before any sort of gaming habits could be developed.

By the time she was three years old, Momoki could communicate rather well in signs and had spoken a few words of her own, even if she hadn’t the slightest idea of what it was she was actually saying. Hajime was sure that she was just stringing sounds together, but he’d reliably point to whatever it was she was saying when she said it, to get the idea in her mind—hence why the girl knew to call him _Da-a-a-a_ when she wanted something. As for trying to talk to her mother, Momoki didn’t have the slightest idea of what to say or how to say it, and would instead just run over to her in her chair and begin grabbing at her legs, her small arms the perfect size for wrapping around one of Chiaki’s thighs and squeezing it tightly. “I can’t help you right now,” she’d normally say, unable to shake the girl off but also not wanting to pause her game to do anything for her. “Go find your father.”

Momoki, not able to hear what was being said to her, would not loosen her grip until Hajime would find her and pry her off of her mother’s leg, taking her out of the room to keep her out of the way. It felt like he was breaking apart a parent-child bond that should have been there, but it was Chiaki who wasn’t being receptive to the bond in the first place so he supposed that it wasn’t anything he needed to feel bad about. The girl wanted to be loved by her mother and didn’t know that going up to her when gaming was happening would result in her finding nothing like what she wanted. “You know, Chiaki, you don’t do any parenting like you’d promised you would,” he eventually pointed out after many, many instances of the same exact scenario played out. “What happened to that?”

“She’s not interested in being on stream, and she doesn’t play games herself, so if I’m doing my work I can’t have her bothering me.” Chiaki was sitting in her chair, her controller on her lap as she fixed her hair with both hands, making sure she looked presentable for the coming stream she was doing. “I mean, you wouldn’t want her bugging you at your job, would you, Hajime?”

He wouldn’t want that, but caring for her had become his second job and he was certain she didn’t see that. “I suppose you’re right. That doesn’t mean you can keep being hands-off with the parenting, though. I need to get to kick back and relax sometimes too.”

“Gaming isn’t relaxing, it’s a lot of work.”

“Chiaki, you’re missing the point.”

She huffed and grumbled but eventually gave in that she’d do her own share of work around the house in the name of taking care of Momoki, but he knew that the end of the issue wasn’t in that moment. Instead of his dear wife playing the role of a responsible mother to the girl, she began forcing Momoki into watching her play games, squeezing her into the chair and not letting her get up no matter how much she clearly wanted it. He’d hear from around the corner how the girl would cry, presumably asking with her signs to get to go, but her mother would ignore it completely and continue on with her own activities.

It wasn’t a solution that they should have taken as a positive one, but he was so desperate to get things out of his realm of worrying for just a moment that he let it happen. There came a time when Momoki did stop resisting being forced to watch her mother’s gaming, finding interest in the way the screens were decorated and how the games themselves looked, and naturally when it came to that Chiaki decided it was time to teach the girl about the actual games, the stories and the plots that they contained. Ultimately it was a waste of time, but it was a form of bonding that was unique to them so it wasn’t something that could have been overlooked by anyone.

That became especially true when Momoki began emulating the designs of the gaming layouts on paper whenever she was allowed to draw, which was after she’d spent time working on writing. Hajime was incredibly impressed at not just how quickly she picked up writing, but how well she’d begun to piece together little elements of design. “I think her spending time watching you play has actually taught her something,” he remarked one day after Momoki had been put to bed and Chiaki was in her chair playing a game for her own amusement. “You should watch her draw sometime, it’s…kind of interesting.”

Chiaki considered it for a moment, her pudgy cheeks squishing up towards her eyes as she thought before shaking her head. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“That’s not something you should say when someone tells you to do something with your own child.” Hajime felt like he had to put up with so much, basically taking care of the girl on his own while also having to provide for the woman he’d married, and the feeling of disrespect he and Momoki both received from Chiaki was beginning to wear him down. “I want you to watch her. Interact with her. Realize she’s a real human with a real set of her own interests and not just someone you can control into doing what you like.”

“She enjoys watching me play games. I’ve heard her try to call me Mom a few times, would she do that if she didn’t enjoy being with me?” Tilting her head, Chiaki looked at Hajime as she waited for his answer, which came with an exasperated and exaggerated stare before he told her that yes, yes she would do that. “Really? I thought she couldn’t hear things, she wouldn’t know I’m her mom.”

“Momoki knows how to say things, and when she says something I make sure she knows what it is she’s talking about. Haven’t you heard her ask for food? For a drink?” The fact that Chiaki was staring blankly back at him told him that she hadn’t heard either of those things, and that made his frustrations reach their boiling point. “Chiaki, what in the world am I still doing here if you’re going to be like this? I’d be just as well off taking care of Momoki in a home of my own, and she wouldn’t have to feel like she’s a burden on you.”

“She’s not a burden on me, though? I like spending time with her, it’s just hard when she doesn’t know what it is I’m doing.” There was an obvious disconnect between Chiaki and the real world that her family lived in, and it was becoming more apparent that she hadn’t ever been willing to try to bridge the gap, especially not when she followed that up with, “It would be easier if she could hear properly. Maybe we could have another one and I’d be able to bond with them better.”

The words spilled out of Hajime’s mouth without him being able to think through them, his true feelings pouring with them. “I wouldn’t want to wish you as a mother on any other child. I _barely_ want Momoki to be forced to have you as her mother. Do…do you realize how much you’re not helping her by being the way you are?” He could feel himself tremoring in his anger, and he could see the gears turning in Chiaki’s mind, her eyes flickering side to side as she thought about what he was saying to her.

“I guess if you don’t want me as her mother, I could go somewhere else.” It was a reasonable conclusion to jump to, but it wasn’t the one that Hajime had wanted to hear. Chiaki’s eyes were beginning brim with tears as she shut her game off without looking at it and got up from her seat, stretching her legs and arms before unexpectedly grabbing him in a hug. “I don’t want to go anywhere else, though, because I like being with you. I like having you here to help me fight my monster, even though we’d thought we’d gotten rid of it. I like having Momoki in my life, even though I don’t know how to be with her. Please don’t make me go somewhere else, this is my happy place.”

There was something about how she’d delivered the last line, with vulnerability prominent in her voice, that made Hajime’s anger and frustration melt into tears of his own, falling onto the top of Chiaki’s head as he cried. “I don’t want you to go anywhere, I just want you to be the best mother to our child you can be. I know you can do it, Chiaki. I’ve known since you first saw her and fell in love with her.”

“I will do it, I promise. I’ll spend all the time I can with her, to make up for my bad behavior. Do you think she’ll forgive me?” He couldn’t speak for the girl, but he had a strong feeling that she would forgive immediately because she didn’t seem to know how to have anything but love for others. The way he told her that yes, yes she would, made Chiaki make her hug a little tighter, squishing Hajime more into her as she choked and sobbed her apologies for being such a horrible parent.

At the end of the day, though, Momoki didn’t know her mother for anything more than the attempts at getting her interested in gaming, and that was going to be the biggest bridge to cross for them as a family. Hajime had to relinquish his control just a bit, so that Chiaki could step in and begin actually interacting with their daughter in ways that weren’t just game-related. It was time spent trying to play with toys, working on different educational assignments, and most importantly of all, watching the girl frantically draw pictures looking for the wide-eyed praise her father always gave her, from a different source.

By the time she was ready to go to school (a specialized, private school that was meant for children with auditory disabilities), it could be said that Momoki was taking being separated from her mother harder than she was taking being separated from her father. While their relationship didn’t look much like a parent-child one should have, the bond that Chiaki developed with her daughter was strong and unable to be broken, and she felt the emptiness of the house when the girl was gone and she was able to get back to her streaming on a more regular basis. Impressed with the change that had happened after their heart-to-heart on the matter, Hajime _almost_ considered asking Chiaki what she wanted to do to fill the void having their daughter away every day had created, but the thought of opening up the door to a second round of parenting struggles was too terrifying to even approach.

They could instead take solace in their loneliness, and know that somehow, the literal little monster they’d created to combat a different sort of monster had grown up pretty okay.

* * *

The call from the school came while Chiaki had been in the middle of a game with some of the people who’d been watching her for well over a decade, and when she quietly put the stream on pause to answer it, everyone knew what it was in regards to. “This is Momoki’s mom, yes,” she said after the person on the other end asked to clarify who she was. “What has she done this time?”

“First place on the regional level, her design will be featured in the fall edition of the magazine.” It felt like a disjointed statement to be made at random, but Chiaki had been very familiar with the accomplishments and accolades that her child had been racking up in the years at her school. She knew that Momoki was a _brilliant_ designer of page layouts, and that she’d been entered in multiple contests to try and get her designs noticed by large-scale productions, rather than just the tiny magazine the school made quarterly for the students. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she sweeps the world level with that layout. She’s already gotten offers to academies to finish her education at, as well as several university offers. You have quite the prodigy on your hands, ma’am.”

“We do, we do,” she replied, cracking a smile as she looked to her computer, the desktop of which was a fake magazine spread Momoki had made about her family and how much they meant to her. “I’ll let her father know about this when he gets home from work. Have you replied to the offers with her unique set of circumstances?”

“Most of them, yes. One in particular stands out because they were already aware of the situation and are willing to accept her even with her disability, because her talent is too precious to overlook.” The administrator on the other side sighed, and it was hard for Chiaki to resist doing the same. “Someone like her, with such potential and promise, would make a good case for us extending our programs until graduation, but perhaps it would be best for her to spread her wings and fly somewhere more prepared for older students.”

“What school made that special offer?” she asked, knowing what she was going to hear deep down but wanting to know it for certain. “You can tell me, right?”

The administrator muffled their end of the phone for a moment before coming back to the call with the requested information. “Hope’s Peak Academy, I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Prestigious place, and enrollment is by invitation only.”

“I’m familiar with it. I’ll look into what they’d want from us, and from Momoki, before we accept, but…” Chiaki trailed off, her eyes reading through one of the passages that had been carefully written on her computer screen, about how the girl knew her parents would do what was best for her, because they loved her so much. “Let them know we would be interested in a meeting with their staff, so they can meet her and know her special quirks for themselves, thank you.”

“Of course. We’ll see you next week.” The call ended there and Chiaki set her phone down, the interest in getting back to playing her game having disappeared completely. She explained to her fellow players why she was shutting things down and ended the stream, only to begin looking up aspects of Hope’s Peak that she’d once been intimately familiar with, that she wasn’t sure would work for Momoki given her inability to hear.

The school bus showed up outside right after Hajime got home from work every day, so he and Momoki walked inside together, the girl bursting with excitement as she came in through the door on her father’s footsteps. “I was told the school called,” she said with a grin, each of her words intentional and slow as she made sure she was speaking to the best of her ability. “I got first place in the contest. They told me.”

“Huh, no one told _me_ that,” Hajime laughed, ruffling Momoki’s brown hair, being careful as always to avoid even brushing the hearing device that was attached to one of her ears. “Guess they called you, Chiaki?”

“They did, and I’m super proud of the accomplishment.” Coming to meet the two at the door, after they’d cast aside shoes, jackets, and any bags they’d brought with them, Chiaki opened her arms for Momoki to come in for a hug, but the girl stared at her in confusion, making her drop one arm while the other reached up to press a finger against her chin. “I do recall also being told that you’ve been getting offers to some schools because of this. What do you think about that?”

Momoki, who had been watching her mother’s lips to make sure she wasn’t missing any words that she couldn’t hear with her aid, gave a small shrug. “I think I want to stay at my school, but I can’t. If I stayed another year maybe I would make friends…”

“Whoa there, maybe if you go to a new school you’ll make friends!” Rather than expecting the girl to know the social cue to come get a hug, Hajime hugged her for himself, making sure that he was closer to her level and not obstructing her head or ear while showing her the affection. “At least, if these schools want you as a student, they’re bound to have others there who are incredibly good at things like you are.”

“Hope’s Peak wants her.”

He looked directly at Chiaki after she’d let those words slip, mouthing them for himself in disbelief. “What was that? Hope’s Peak? But she…they’ll let her in?”

“According to the administrator that called me, they specifically mentioned working with her to make things work.” Seeing the look on her husband’s face at that revelation was priceless, because he was so shocked and surprised that he looked like he was about to cry. “I know, I couldn’t believe it either.”

Mumbling something loudly, just garbled sounds and half-words that weren’t meant to be understood, Momoki took a second before she cleared her thoughts and told her parents a key piece of the whole conversation. “I got a letter that called me a new name. The Ultimate Layout Artist. It said I make nice magazine layouts and can go to school for it.”

“That’s amazing!” Hajime exclaimed, hugging her tighter before pulling back, opening up space in the hug for Chiaki to get involved, an offer she couldn’t refuse. “I can’t believe it, who would’ve known you learning to love design from watching games would get you this far? I mean, Hope’s Peak, wanting you? That’s not something you’d hear every day!”

A bubble of immense pride built in Chiaki’s throat, words she wanted to express but as she was involved in the hug with the two most important people in her life she couldn’t find any way to say them. She’d chided herself for so many years about how she’d put gaming first, being a mother second, and while Momoki had never said a word about it she knew that it had impacted her to some degree. The fact that part of the impact was getting herself an invitation to an elite academy was unexpected and made Chiaki realize that she hadn’t screwed up as badly as she’d thought she had.

“Mom, if I go, do I have to have better hearing? I could…get it fixed if I need to.” Why Momoki had addressed her mother for the question, neither parent knew, but it was a damper on the good feelings, if even for just a moment.

“No, Momoki, they want you exactly as you are. Half a head working to hear half the things, but a mind ready to design everything you can imagine, that’s the girl they want. If this were a game, you’d be Momoki Hinata, Ultimate Layout Artist, the plucky protagonist ready to make waves in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's the end of that! I love Momoki and I love her backstory, hence why I wrote this to flesh where she comes from out just a hair! she's a sweetheart <3


End file.
